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News from bgc partners, inc.
18 Jan, 2022, 21:05 GMT BGC PARTNERS' FOURTH QUARTER 2021 FINANCIAL RESULTS ANNOUNCEMENT TO BE ISSUED PRIOR TO MARKET OPEN ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2022
BGC Partners, Inc. (Nasdaq: BGCP) ("BGC"), a leading global brokerage and financial technology company, today announced the details regarding its...
30 Dec, 2021, 21:05 GMT BGC Partners Updates its Outlook for the Fourth Quarter of 2021
BGC Partners, Inc. (Nasdaq: BGCP) ("BGC Partners" or "BGC" or the "Company"), a leading global brokerage and financial technology company, today...
14 Dec, 2021, 07:00 GMT Capitalab Completes Second EURO STOXX 50 Equity Derivatives Compression Cycle Offsetting $6 Billion Notional
Capitalab, a division of BGC Brokers LP, an entity within the BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ: BGCP) group of companies, in collaboration with Eurex...
03 Nov, 2021, 12:13 GMT BGC Partners Launches Fenics Markets Xchange ("FMX")
BGC Partners, Inc. (Nasdaq: BGCP) ("BGC Partners" or "BGC" or the "Company"), a leading global brokerage and financial technology company, announced...
03 Nov, 2021, 12:01 GMT BGC Partners Reports Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results
01 Nov, 2021, 07:00 GMT BGC Completes Sale of Insurance Brokerage Business to The Ardonagh Group
14 Oct, 2021, 13:00 BST BGC Partners Announces Its 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting of Stockholders
06 Oct, 2021, 13:00 BST BGC Partners' Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results Announcement To Be Issued Prior To Market Open On Wednesday, November 3, 2021
30 Sep, 2021, 13:00 BST BGC Partners Updates its Outlook for the Third Quarter of 2021
04 Aug, 2021, 13:01 BST BGC Partners Reports Second Quarter 2021 Financial Results
BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ: BGCP) ("BGC Partners," "BGC," or the "Company"), a leading global brokerage and financial technology company, today...
28 Jul, 2021, 09:00 BST Capitalab and Eurex first in Europe to execute compression in equity index derivatives
Capitalab, a division of Aurel BGC and BGC Brokers LP, entities within the BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ: BGCP) group of companies, collaborates with...
06 Jul, 2021, 13:05 BST BGC Partners' Second Quarter 2021 Financial Results Announcement To Be Issued Prior To Market Open On Wednesday, August 4, 2021
30 Jun, 2021, 21:05 BST BGC Partners Updates its Outlook for the Second Quarter of 2021
08 Jun, 2021, 13:00 BST Capitalab enhances its FX optimisation service with sophisticated RWA and SA-CCR focus
Capitalab, a division of BGC Brokers LP, an entity within the BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ: BGCP) group of companies, announced today enhancements to...
27 May, 2021, 21:05 BST BGC Partners to Present at Piper Sandler Global Exchange & FinTech Conference on June 9, 2021
26 May, 2021, 12:58 BST BGC Announces Agreement to Sell its Insurance Brokerage Business to The Ardonagh Group for $500 Million
BGC Partners, Inc. (Nasdaq: BGCP) ("BGC"), a leading global brokerage and financial technology company, announced today that it has entered into an...
29 Apr, 2021, 13:01 BST BGC Partners Reports First Quarter 2021 Financial Results
12 Apr, 2021, 21:48 BST BGC Partners' First Quarter 2021 Financial Results Announcement To Be Issued Prior To Market Open On Thursday, April 29, 2021
31 Mar, 2021, 13:00 BST BGC Partners Updates its Outlook for the First Quarter of 2021
16 Mar, 2021, 12:00 GMT BGC Partners to Present at the Piper Sandler Virtual FIA Investor Event Today, March 16, 2021
BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ: BGCP) ("BGC Partners" or "BGC" or "the Company"), a leading global brokerage and financial technology company, today...
24 Feb, 2021, 13:01 GMT BGC Partners Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Financial Results
11 Feb, 2021, 11:36 GMT Fenics GO named OTC Trading Platform of the Year
Fenics GO, a pioneering electronic trading platform operated by the Fenics division of BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ: BGCP) ("BGC Partners," "BGC" or...
10 Feb, 2021, 09:00 GMT Capitalab named OTC Infrastructure Service of the Year
Capitalab, a division of BGC Brokers LP, an entity within the BGC Partners, Inc. (NASDAQ: BGCP) group of companies, has been named the winner of the...


Co-organized with Shanghai ecommerce Association and Pudong ecommerce Association, No.1 Asia Internet marketing company eOneNet will present the first cross-border Shanghai Internet marketing seminar on 6 August, 2014 in Shanghai targeted for companies who want to engage in cross-border ecommerce and increase their sales globally.
The co-founders of eOneNet, Fione Tan and Harrace Lau will both present in this international online marketing seminar and will reveal their successful experience of engaging in international online marketing and cross-border ecommerce both B2B and B2C, and in particular, they will share "what" to sell to the international market, "where" to sell, i.e. the most popular ecommerce and social media platforms to sell, and "how" to sell, such as how to get global buyers and customers find out the site, how to upgrade from a Web1.0 website to the latest Web3.0 platform, how to get top rankings in Google, and how to engage in social media marketing, and successful B2B and B2C websites selling China products to the global market.
Companies taking up cross-border ecommerce is still a minority, with a total of about 200,000 companies out of more than 30 million SMEs, but cross border online sales is growing at an compound rate of 50% so the earlier a company can start engaging in cross-border ecommerce, the better," said Fione Tan.


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Judge sets hearing to determine if technology company should be penalized
Judge Robert Schroeder III in Tyler, Texas has scheduled a court hearing on Oct. 16, 2016 to find out whether attorneys from Dallas' Buether Joe & Carpenter and their patent infringement plaintiff corporate client, Marshall-based Wireless Remote Systems, should be given disciplinary action for filing a patent infringement claim because the company no longer owns the patent in question.
Winnipeg, Canada-based software company Librestream Technologies will be arguing that Wireless Remote Systems and its attorneys' behavior "is the very kind that gives the plaintiff's patent bar a bad name", that they practice "patent trolling at its worst", and that their schemes "should not be tolerated in the Eastern District of Texas or anywhere else".
The Patent Trial and Appeals Board in 2014 ruled that Wireless Remote Systems' ownership of patents that covered wireless video and audio data remote systems were invalid.
If you or your business are having intellectual property problems, may it be with trademark or copyright protection, or even patent litigation, get in touch with our attorneys at Gagnon, Peacock & Vereeke, P.C., who conduct legal services in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex area of Texas, by calling our offices today at (214) 824-1414.
Gillette files patent infringement lawsuit against Schick
A civil lawsuit filed on August 23 in New York by Ohio-based multinational consumer goods manufacturer Procter & Gamble Co.'s Gillette subsidiary asks the United States District Court to force competing consumer products company Edgewell Personal Care to shelve newly-launched private label razors and remove copy from their labels declaring that their razors "shave as good or better" than Gillette's Mach 3 blades.
The lawsuit alleges that Schick's private-label razors were manufactured while Gillette's patent was still valid. Patent law prohibits competitors from making similar products while the patent is still in effect. Gillette argues that Schick's products were released to the market entirely too soon after the Mach 3's patent expired to have complied with the law. The company also rejects claims that Shick's razors shave as well or better than theirs do.
This is not Gillette's first patent infringement lawsuit in recent years. In 2015, Gillette filed a lawsuit against California-based razor delivery company Dollar Shave Club for allegedly infringing on Gillette's hundred patents. Gillette also sued ShaveLogic Inc. last year, after four of it's former employees moved to the budding company. They were accused of breaching their contracts and sharing trade secrets with their new company.
If you believe your patents are being infringed upon, contact the Dallas patent infringement attorneys at Gagnon, Peacock & Vereeke, P.C. We also handle intellectual property cases pertaining to trade secrets, domain name disputes, patents, trademarks, and copyrights, among others and we are ready to help you through the dispute. Call our offices today at (214) 824-1414.
BlackBerry files patent infringement lawsuit against Avaya
The technology company BlackBerry Ltd. filed a lawsuit last Tuesday, August 2 against Avaya Inc. for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Dallas.
BlackBerry claims the patents Avaya infringed upon include 9143801, 8964849, 8116739, 8886212, 8688439, 7440561, 8554218, and 737296, which BlackBerry filed between 1998 and 2012. In the complaint, BlackBerry alleges that Avaya used BlackBerry's technology in multiple products and that they want to be reimbursed for the illegal actions done by Avaya.
In a letter to Avaya on Dec. 17, 2015, BlackBerry told the company of their complaints before they filed for legal action. BlackBerry CEO John Chen said they are extremely proud of their patents, as, "Throughout its history, BlackBerry has demonstrated a commitment to innovation, including through its investments in research and development, which have totaled more than $5.5 billion over the past five years. BlackBerry has protected the technical innovations resulting from these investments, including through seeking patent protection."
If you have a case concerning intellectual property litigation, such as trademark or copyright protection, in the Dallas Fort Worth-Metroplex, get in touch with the attorneys at Gagnon, Peacock & Vereeke, P.C.. Learn more about what we can do for you and the legal services we offer by calling our offices today at (214) 824-1414.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


On August 29, 2016, Howmedica Osteonics Corp. recalled 42,519 of the Stryker-branded LFIT defective hips due to FDA regulations. The "higher than expected" incidence of taper lock failure for the Stryker LFIT Anatomic CoCr V20 Femoral Heads resulted in numerous lawsuits. The Judicial Panel on Multi-District Legislation (JPMDL) created the new MDL No. 2768 to hear products liability litigation.
The failure of the Stryker-branded prosthetic hip replacement device led numerous potential hazards to pose a threat to the well-beings of many.
As a result, there may be an increased risk of metallosis, necrosis, and osteolysis. Higher levels of cobalt and chromium in the bloodstream may also result. These health consequences make surgery necessary in order to remove and replace the implants. The LFIT V20 Cobalt-Chromium device has a tendency to cause corrosion at the taper junction when assembled with femoral stems made with different alloys. Issues with the development, manufacturing, testing, regulation, promotion, and labeling of the LFIT V20 CoCr Femoral Head has made way for injuries to occur.
Not only are these lawsuits consolidated into Federal Multi-District Litigation, but they are also consolidated into State Multi-County Litigation. It is requested that the New Jersey State Courts create a multi-county litigation docket for this same hip replacement device. In response to this request, New Jersey's Chief Justice assigned state lawsuits over the Stryker LFIT Anatomic CoCr V20 Femoral Heads into a multi-county litigation docket. The court then assigned the artificial hip cases to Judge Rachelle Harz of the Bergen County Superior Court. Judge Harz is also assigned other Stryker and DePuy metal-on-metal hip implant cases that our firm is litigating. Separately, 36 federal LFIT cases were centralized in April into Multi-District Litigation 2768 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Injuries associated with this device are serious. Our lawyers handle both federal and state cases associated with this device. Our firm has had multi-million dollar settlements in similar hip implant litigations. Your pain and suffering should not be ignored. We at Rheingold, Giuffra, Ruffo & Plotkin, LLP are working to protect you.


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UDINE 2013: Divorce, Korean Style: All About My Wife (내 아내의 모든 것, 2012)
Part of MKC's coverage of the 15th Udine Far East Film Festival.
(by Rex Baylon)
There used to be a time when America was known as a manufacturing giant. In agriculture, electronics, and automobile design America seemed not to have any contenders. With regards to film, Hollywood was the first and last word when it came to cinema. Even as the US began its slow decline, the soft power of American cinema never seemed to waver even through all the social upheaval of the twentieth century; while presidents came and went, one hit wonders rose and fell, and wars were won or lost, Hollywood never lost its luster in the eyes of foreign and domestic audiences.
However, as the calendar rolled back to zero it seemed that the American cinema empire had begun to show signs of wear. A plus to this is that ignored pockets of the cine-verse were being explored. National cinemas outside the realm of America and Western Europe were finally getting their day in the sun. Hollywood films still played to worldwide audiences but viewers became more discerning with the entertainment they consumed. Case in point, cinephiles around the world at the start of the aughts were drawn to Korean films because of the strong and oftentimes violent emotions and stories being enacted onscreen. Yet aside from that, Korean cinema took the entirety of film history and instead of just reinventing the wheel chose instead to respect the past while at the same time reinvigorating flagging genres. While old Hollywood trotted out its tired formulaic pictures to an even more apathetic crowd, Korea's film industry grew by leaps and bounds as it's homegrown talents brought life back into the thriller, the melodrama, and the romantic comedy.
You would be hard-pressed to find a Korean film fan or scholar who would label Min Kyu-dong as an auteur. Beginning his career off with a bang, Min co-directed the classic K-horror picture Memento Mori (1999) after which he followed it up with a series of romantic melodramas and comedies, none that seemed to set the world on fire but nonetheless they cemented the man's status as a journeyman director. In 2012, a banner year for Korean romantic films, the veteran filmmaker released All About My Wife, a picture, which if judged merely by its poster and trailer would make many viewers roll their eyes in utter disgust by their mis-perception that the film was some sort of cookie-cutter Katherine Heigl or Reese Witherspoon rom-com. Min's film though is more reminiscent of classic 30's screwball comedies and Billy Wilder's mid-century romantic melodramas. And what elevates the film to an even higher plane is that Min and his co-writer Heo Sung-hye play around with the romance and screwball genres, all the while referencing and poking fun at the tropes that have made people come back for more as well as the clichés that inspire some of the most genuine hatred for the genre.
Structured like a roundelay, a possible allusion to Max Ophuls' classic melodramas of the 40's and 50's, All About My Wife's circular narrative opens on a scene of two lonely people on holiday in Japan stumbling upon one another during an earthquake and falling in love over a simple meal of tea and noodles. This meet-cute is echoed in the final scene of the film as the two lovers, who've broken up by this time, are in a restaurant replaying their entire relationship all the way to their first meeting and rekindling their romance as each discovers the motivations that drove them to each other. In between the opener and closer we are witness to a comic waltz between the milquetoast Doo-hyun (Lee Sun-kyun), his abrasive wife Jung-in (Lim Soo-jung), and Sung-ki (Ryoo Seung-ryong) the Casanova. This odd love triangle features Doo-hyun being completely repelled by his wife and trying to pawn her off to Sung-ki who takes on the job of seducing her. Of course, he ends up falling in love with her and Jung-in, who seems to be in her own little world where everything irritates her gives, the film a real sense of kinetic energy.
Jung-in might seem like the archetypical nagging wife/ballbuster but as the story develops and we witness her interacting with various characters she is revealed to be a far more sympathetic character than her long suffering husband and would-be seducer. And unlike many contemporary American rom-coms that place the woman as some prize for the male leads to compete over Jung-in is developed as a character with distinct wants, hopes, desires, and neurotic tics. Neither a shiny prize to fawn over and also not a cliché bitch-goddess from the ninth circle of hell, her arc in the story is not about her changing her personality to suit her male counterparts, but rather everyone around her coming to understand and see her as something more than just a shrill banshee screaming out obscenities and pointing out people's masked flaws.
As for Doo-hyun and Sung-ki, these two opposites have a very unusual dynamic in the film. At first, Doo-hyun envies Sung's bachelor lifestyle, with women constantly trying to knock down his door, and there is an expectation that Sung will begin mentoring Doo-hyun in the ways of seduction and living the carefree bachelor lifestyle that Doo seemingly wants to live but none of that occurs. Doo-hyun is just a frustrated man who is incapable of expressing his thoughts and opinions, especially to the one person that should matter to him the most, his wife. This problem is the root cause of all his issues with his wife and ironically it is Sung's advice on how to make his wife fall out of love with him that forces him to realize this fatal flaw in his character and in turn Sung becomes far less of a rival or caricature. Ryoo Seung-ryong's portrayal of a damaged lothario who can have any woman except for the one who got away walks that fine line between broad comedy and serious drama but he pulls it off. This is a good thing since a character who can do anything and seemingly seduce anyone is so comical and so far removed from reality that there is a real danger in thinking that the character is just a one-note joke.
A perfect example of this is when Sung begins studying up on all the things that interest, annoy, and motivate Jung-in. On first watching this scene I thought it was far too hokey and during those first few run-ins between Jung and Sung-ki the chemistry and seduction ploy weren't believable. But as Jung-in starts to warm up to him and Sung-ki's personality begins to meld with the fake one he has been cultivating to attract Jung-in you become invested in this possible relationship. One scene specifically threaded this storyline with one of my favorite Wong Kar-Wai films, Days of Being Wild (1990). Sung-ki references verbatim a classic line from the film spoken ironically by a character, played by iconic Hong Kong star Leslie Cheung, who plays a tragic playboy character just like Sung-ki does in All About My Wife. These subtle references peppered through out the film as well as the wonderful acting between the three leads make me happy that at least one country is continuing the tradition of smart romantic comedies that American cinema has abandoned for blockbuster spectacles.
The Berlin File (베를린) 2013
National Security (남영동1985) 2012
A Gothic Fantasy: A Werewolf Boy (늑대소년) 2012
An Ambitious Korean Gangster Film: New World (신세계) 2013
Eungyo (은교, 2012)
The Thieves (도둑들) 2012
How to Use Guys with Secret Tips (남자 사용설명서) 2013
Korean Horror Comedies and Ghost Sweepers (점쟁이들) 2012
Reviews and features on Korean film appear regularly on Modern Korean Cinema. For film news, external reviews, and box office analysis, take a look at the Korean Box Office Update, Korean Cinema News and the Weekly Korean Reviews, which appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings (Korean Standard Time).
To keep up with the best in Korean film you can sign up to our RSS Feed, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.
Labels: 2012, all about my wife, korea, korean film, lee sun-gkyun, lim soo-jung, min kyu-dong, Nae Anaeui Modeun Geot, rex baylon, romantic comedy, ryoo seung-ryong, 내 아내의 모든 것
Korean Box Office: Iron Man 3 Has Gargantuan Debut...
New Korean Films: A Sexy Nap (2013 Week 17)
Jeonju 2013: Lebanon Emotion (레바논 감정, 2013)
Jeonju 2013: Cheer Up Mr. Lee (힘내세요, 병헌씨, 2012)
Jeonju 2013: Groggy Summer (그로기 썸어, 2013)
UDINE 2013: How to Use Guys with Secret Tips (남자 사...
Jeonju 2013: December (디셈버, 2013)
UDINE 2013: The Thieves (도둑들, 2012)
UDINE 2013: A Muse (은교, Eungyo, 2012)
UDINE 2013: Divorce, Korean Style: All About My Wi...
UDINE 2013: An Ambitious Korean Gangster Film: New...
UDINE 2013: A Gothic Fantasy: A Werewolf Boy (늑대소년...
UDINE 2013: National Security (남영동1985, 2012)
Korean Box Office: Just Hanging Around - Holdovers...
UDINE 2013: The Berlin File (베를린, 2013)
New Korean Films: Free Way for the Indies (2013 We...
Korean Box Office: Cruise Knocks Out Fists of Lege...
New Korean Films: Punching Bags and Mannequins (20...
An Early Korean Youth Film: Early Rain (초우, Chou) ...
Korean Box Office: Running Man Quick Off the Mark ...
Lack of Focus Hinders An Ethics Lesson (분노의 윤리학, B...
New Korean Films: US Companies Rush In (2013 Week 14)
Korean Box Office: G.I. Joe 2 Wipes Out the Compet...


Transylvania 6-5000 isn't an amazing film, despite starring the indelible Ed Begly Jr. and Jeff Goldblum. A Yugoslavian production that was financed by the Dow Chemical Company as a means to release frozen funds that had accumulated as the Dinar, as per Yugoslavian law, it's an extremely light comedy populated with familiar faces that were unknown to me at the time. But none of that really mattered to 7 year old Jacob: it had The Wolfman! The Mummy! Frankensteins Monster! Everything a young budding monster kid needed in a film! Critics weren't so kind though, and in a holiday season still reeling from the release of Back To The Future, it quickly fell into obscurity. But what the movie may lack in substance, they make up for 100% in the title song by Paul Chiten, Transylvania 6-5000.
It's hard to tell if musician and composer Paul Chiten is a time traveler or not, but it's impossible to deny that those words? Most of the country hasn't stopped repeating them since November 2016.
If you can't already tell, lyrically Chiten is no Sondheim, but what we have here is deliciously descriptive. What really works for this song is the, of course, the music. And this song is ready made straight FIRE Halloween track. We're greeted at the top of the track with the low buzz of a synthesized church organs, igniting images of spooky houses and creaking stairs, until the guitars propel us into the song proper. Distantly in the background a woman descending wails echo like the howls of wolves on the moors leading into the quickened bridge that is immediately hummable. Then we get the chorus, a discordant harmony dips on the word "five-thousand" into a low octave that instantly shows the songs age. Not in any negative way mind you, just...what were musicians fascinations with randomly pitching a vocal line so deep, most notably used in the song "Oh Yeah" by Swiss band Yello from Ferris Buellers Day Off and The Secret of My Success. Who knows, but it makes me smile!
Seriously, Paul Chiten, who I am sure is a fan of Terror Tracks, write more horror songs. His use of descriptive lyrics in this first passage are absolutely aces, scratching that spooky itch that only things like EC Comics can. And like those comics, Chiten lets us know how self aware he is of this silly song. But, damnit, he crushed it.
If you are looking for your next Halloween jam, or if you're like me and bop to Halloween songs year round, Transylvania 6-5000 may be your new favorite track.


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Rowling Keeps It Real: On "The Casual Vacancy"
By Roxana Badin
THE MOST POWERFUL MYTH surrounding J.K. Rowling — second only to the myth of Harry Potter himself — is how the author created Harry Potter. The myth is so irresistible that any single mother with limited means writing a book will hear someone at some point say to her in a spirit of encouragement: "Look at J.K. Rowling." They'll say it even if they know nothing of Rowling or the mom.
In this creation myth, a single mother, Joanne, her baby sleeping in a stroller beside her, scribbles at a local café to escape her unheated apartment. From a fortunate confluence of imagination, postpartum hormones, financial straits, and broken marriage blues, she inks a first novel on paper napkins. A thousand or so napkins plus seven follow-up books later, her series redefines the children's book market and sells 450 million books worldwide.
Rowling has herself described the characterization as "50 percent true, 50 percent embroidery." She was not, for example, a homeless, teenage meth addict. She was a college graduate planning to get her teaching certificate upon finishing her novel. And while Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone would be her first book, at 30 she had already tried writing two novels, and had consumed, since childhood, a steady diet of Tolkien, Dickens, Hardy (the word "Dumbledore" came from The Mayor of Casterbridge), Enid Blyton, Noel Streatfeild, Barry Hines, Margery Allingham, and Dorothy L. Sayers. The idea for Harry came to Rowling on a train to Kings Cross Station more than six years before the book was finally published — a gestation period close to that of an African elephant. Not exactly the spontaneous mythological birth of Harry springing out of Rowling's head. And while she was clinically depressed and living on benefits (unlike the United States, Britain regularly provided them to graduates embarking on new careers), her accommodations, though poor, were heated, and writing paper was within her budget. She simply liked going to the café so that she wouldn't have to interrupt her writing flow to make herself another cup. Rowling is a practical woman. On her "castaway" interview with BBC Radio Four's Desert Island Discs, the book she said she'd take with her wasn't Shakespeare's sonnets or the collected works of Proust — it was an SAS Survival Guide.
Rowling's real life story is neither as romantic nor as tragic as has been portrayed in the media, but that's not the point. The myth tells us something important, if off-putting, about ourselves: we want the creative process of the down-at-heel single mother to be a fecund miracle, in the same way we want all rags-to-riches stories to involve a firm but romantic pulling-up of bootstraps. On this side of the pond, we in the United States call this dream American, but it is just another variation on our fantasy about artistic creation in general. Deprivation kindles an emotion so powerful that in the garret a gushing Van Gogh paints The Potato Eaters.
Self-reliance, the 19th century concept of relying on one's own resources and abilities without fuss or help, is the basis for such pervasive and lyrical 19th century idioms as "pulling one's self up by one's boot straps," "hoeing one's own roe," and "paddling one's own canoe" ("Voyager upon life's sea, To yourself be true, And whate'er your lot may be, Paddle your own canoe.") This idea has informed our modern Western attitude about how individuals are expected to make it in the world. To be sure, artists and others with self-made success stories, such as Doris Lessing, have often described their privation in these terms: "I had no money, I could have got some by writing to my family, of course, but it had to be the bootstraps or nothing."
Desperation over one's financial straits is very similar in quality to the creative struggle itself. The initial stages of creation can be as psychologically barren and oppressive as being broke; the dreaded "blank page" described by artists, consciously or not, echoes the odd American self-reliance colloquialism. Black jazz artists would borrow the 18th century "every tub must stand on its own bottom," popular among Southern blacks, to describe complete improvisation, and the choreographer Twyla Tharp, in her book The Creative Habit, has described the desperate, random, groping-in-the-dark of one's first creative steps as "scratching." Almost unheard of today, "scratching for oneself" was used in the 19th century to describe taking care of oneself: "Shaking off the other child, [she] told him to scratch for hisself a time, while she began to prepare the supper" (Alice Cary, Married, not Mated, 1856).
But, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who coined the phrase "self-reliance" in his essay of the same name, wasn't writing about "making it" without assistance. His Self-Reliance was about the genius inside us all and the imperative to follow one's own instincts and ideas, like Tharp and the jazz improvisationists. Whatever "scratching" Rowling had to do (one can easily imagine her scouring the Oxford English Dictionary), whatever "strand of creative code in her imagination," as Tharp calls it, gave her the impulse to write Harry and find her inner genius, the success of Harry Potter can't be attributed to her poverty. That she was poor while writing made it all the more essential that she had state benefits, the charity of friends, and that café to keep her on course to work through to the end.
All this could explain why Rowling's first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, a plot-driven, ribald meditation on our attitude about the poor, the powerless, and the nature of self-delusion, crackles with a righteous indignation over how society shirks social responsibility by buying into what is essentially a bastardized version of self-reliance. It's as if the absurdity of her own single mom myth-meme rankled Rowling to write her first book of adult fiction to adults with the bleak message: this is how the world works, folks.
Rowling uses her own personal experiences of being powerless, not just as a single mother but as an alienated teenager in the Forest of Dean. Rowling has said that one of the first things she did before she began writing The Casual Vacancy was to draw a map of Pagford, the novel's fictional setting. Her hands-on approach is revealing of her novelist intuition. Rowling understands the close relationship between literature and real life. As Gabriel García Márquez has observed, "Writing something is almost as hard as making a table […] Basically very little magic and a lot of hard work are involved." A writer's material — reality — is just as hard as wood. Fashioning fiction out of one's personal experiences requires certain tricks and techniques, according to Márquez. Rowling uses Pagford to repossess a familiar childhood landscape. In the detailed reimagining of the invented place, cartographic and otherwise, she locates the novel's center of gravity: a local council election. She knows what matters most to the Pagfordians: their conflicting ambitions and clashing perceptions of reality, what ties them to their allies, what separates them from their enemies, how elusive their happiness is, and the location of their disappointments, which lead them to turn their coldness on each other.
Because Pagford is inspired by Rowling's childhood home, the novel is fraught with issues of subjectivity, both hers and the book's characters. Rowling has admitted that she was dying to escape her rural town, and we, as readers, feel her suffocation. Pagford and its citizens are for the most part insufferable — hypocritical, provincial, petty, and so self-deluded and lost in their own perceptions of events that they can do nothing to connect with each other. The rural ensemble is divided horizontally in upstairs/downstairs fashion, but here "upstairs" are the adults trying to control events in the town, and "downstairs" are the teenage children who hate them. The teenagers seem to possess the moral compass, the "self-drawn map of what constitute[s] fair play," hence their disgust with the goings-on upstairs.
The "cold open" of the book is the sudden death by aneurysm of Barry Fairbrother, a compassionate member of the local Parish Council originally from the local housing project, the Fields. Fairbrother led the school's rowing team with the hope of enfranchising students, particularly those from the Fields, like Krystal Weedon, to the quiet chagrin of many in Pagford. Rowling introduces the characters by following their reactions to the news, which set the plot in motion. Howard Mollison, Fairbrother's nemesis, leader of the Parish Council and the owner of the local café and delicatessen, tries to fill the vacant seat (the "casual vacancy") with a Pagfordian who, like Howard and unlike Fairbrother, wants to cut off the Fields and the Bellchapel Addiction Clinic, both of which have been sponging off the good citizens of Pagford for long enough.
One English review of Rowling's book complained that Rowling's depiction of the Parish Council election makes the plot implausible because district councils, not parish councils, have the power to cut funding. While this may be true, the criticism misses the point. A hot contest for a parish council seat is not just funny, it's catastrophically sad. To the characters, the Parish Council election means everything not merely because they cannot see beyond the limited confines of Pagford (Howard believes it to be the most important place on earth; his favorite song, "The Green, Green Grass of Home"), but because they are deluding themselves about their own happiness. When they cannot find fulfillment because their respective vested interests in the election's outcome either don't materialize or wind up ruining their reputations, they are condemned to return to the same desperately ineffectual states of fear, loneliness, and estrangement in which they started. The vacant seat is their false talisman. When Howard and his secret lover, Maureen, confront Parminder Jawanda, a Fairbrother ally, with the news of his untimely demise, "they watched Councillor Jawanda disappear around a corner" and "were contemplating the casual vacancy: and they saw it, not as an empty space but as a magician's pocket, full of possibilities."
Rowling makes the pathos of the casual vacancy the objective reality of Pagford. This is fiction after all: Rowling makes the rules and we accept them. Though Rowling is known for her vivid imagination, it is her knack for capturing the realties of human behavior and psychology that makes the story feel surreal. Maybe Rowling knows too well from personal experience that reality is often stranger than fiction. Her own father sold his first edition copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at Sotheby's for $48,000. The book was a gift from Rowling for Father's Day in which she wrote, "Lots of love from your first born," with a drawing of a hand reaching for a running gnome. Life in the English provinces resembles the wildest imagination. So do family relations.
Tharp argues that artists don't consciously choose their "field of vision"; it's in their creative DNA. The Casual Vacancy, though described as a "tragicomedy," is for the most part a satire, a parody of constantly moving targets: provincial towns, Britain's politics, 21st century society. Rowling treats these targets the way she views the world as an artist — from a distance. This "observational focal length" gives The Casual Vacancy a Rear Window effect. Like James Stewart with his view of the neighboring apartment building, we witness the characters react to Fairbrother's death with binoculars that we can sometimes peer through. But, even when middle-aged Samantha's wrinkled cleavage is described in sharp focus, we are not up close. With some notable exceptions, we don't know the characters' deep inner complexities, making the story sometimes feel allegorical. There could easily be versions of these characters in Texas or Long Island.
The Casual Vacancy's success and failure lie in Rowling's commitment to its social message. The grimly realistic end to the book's unlikely teenage heroine, Krystal Weedon, alone effectively relays her point, but because Rowling is a moralist, the book collapses into melodrama. What Rowling believes is wrong with society's treatment of the poor becomes more important than sustaining the satirical construct and tragicomic tone of Pagford, and the integrity of the story suffers. She betrays her own choices as the storyteller. Her intellectually driven idea for the book (the working title for the book was "Responsibility") takes over her intuition.
Despite this, Rowling creates a novel that lingers in the conscience and forces self-evaluation in the reader. Her goal of waking us up is noble and she does it masterfully. The most successfully drawn characters are the adolescents: Fats, a nihilistic teenager with sociopathic tendencies who mines his own hatred of his adoptive middle-class father by finding "authenticity" in crime, destitution, sex with Krystal Weedon, and Krystal herself. In stark contrast to Fats's middle-class life, Krystal must take care of her heroin-addicted mother and younger brother, Robbie, to prevent the state from taking Robbie away. Rowling's descriptions of Krystal's world — the rank filth, the prostitution and violence — are written with the force of someone who wants to bludgeon you into awareness.
Published 2012-09-27 00:00:00
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Foreign Affairs | Opinion
Will New Zealand become more hawkish toward China?
New Zealand's relationship with China since the mid-2000s has been characterized first and foremost as an economic opportunity. But with China's relations with New Zealand's allies deteriorating, is Wellington ready to take a more assertive stance?
Alex Smith	 Published December 9, 2020
Illustration by Alex Santafé
https://supchina.com/2020/12/09/will-new-zealand-become-more-hawkish-toward-china/
China's relationships with the major countries in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing partnership has markedly deteriorated since 2016. The U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K. have been embroiled in trade disputes, battles over whether Huawei should be allowed to build 5G networks, and diplomatic jostling over Hong Kong. Following the Australian government's call for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, its relationship with China hit a new low in November when China announced tariffs of up to 212% on imported Australian wine. Yet there is one remaining Five Eyes country that has, so far, avoided a difficult reckoning of its relationship with China: New Zealand.
New Zealand's apparent decision not to adopt the more hawkish stances of the other Five Eyes members has not gone unnoticed. Articles on New Zealand's relationship with China and the Five Eyes will frequently note that the country has been labeled the "soft underbelly" of the network due to its alleged failure to take Chinese interference in its domestic affairs seriously, something that has reportedly inflamed those in the intelligence sector in other Five Eyes countries. When the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia issued a joint statement on the Hong Kong national security law, U.S.-based China commentator Bill Bishop was quick to point out New Zealand's absence. New Zealand, instead, opted to issue its own statement.
New Zealand's relationship with China has often been depicted effusively by both sides, with frequent championing of what has come to be known as the five diplomatic "firsts," the most notable of which is perhaps New Zealand's status as the first Western country to enter into a free trade agreement with China.
Anne-Marie Brady, a New Zealand academic, has been the most public proponent of New Zealand's ongoing need to take so-called Chinese interference seriously. In a recent Diplomat article, Brady argues that New Zealand has in fact been undergoing a "quiet recalibration" of its relationship with China since 2017. According to Brady, New Zealand has been practicing "deliberate ambiguity in its China policy", even if it has "strenuously avoided confronting China directly." When New Zealand has taken issue with China, Brady argues that it has strategically done so in a way that appears "country agnostic," and offers as an example the New Zealand Parliament's 2018 to 2019 investigation into foreign interference, which Brady asserts was clearly centered on China — though this was deliberately never directly acknowledged.
Rather than lashing out at China, Brady asserts that New Zealand has sought to "boost [its] resilience and resistance" by seeking to strengthen its influence in its corner of the Pacific with the "Pacific Reset" — a foreign policy decision to ramp up cooperation with South Pacific states on issues such as climate change and increase New Zealand's aid to the region — and to diversify its trade ties through the pursuit of multilateral agreements.
Meanwhile, Australasia-based scholars Anna Powles and Joanne Wallis have also observed a shift in New Zealand's approach to China. In October, the scholars noted that New Zealand's then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters appeared to be taking a stronger rhetorical stance on China, a move they pointed out was likely to appease and "hearten [New Zealand's] Australian ally," which had previously expressed concern about New Zealand's apparent lack of assertiveness on the China front.
New Zealand has also hammed up its reputation as having an "independent foreign policy" — a reputation the country developed after being suspended from its military alliance with the U.S. and Australia after its decision to ban nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed ships from entering its waters. So far, this strategy appears to have helped New Zealand moderate expectations and navigate its way through the competing demands of both its security and trading partners. At a minimum, it seems to have meant New Zealand has avoided being likened to "a giant kangaroo that serves as the dog of the U.S.," which is how the Global Times recently described Australia.
But this moderately stronger rhetoric may not be the more overt stance that security partners and some within New Zealand have been calling for. While New Zealand has signed on to joint statements regarding the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and has raised the issue with Chinese officials behind closed doors, groups like the New Zealand Jewish Council and the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand have demanded that New Zealand take direct action against China. Others have called for New Zealand to follow in the U.K.'s footsteps and provide a safe haven to Hongkongers looking to escape the new national security law. And this past weekend, Catherine Churchman, a lecturer in Asian studies at Victoria University of Wellington, argued that New Zealand needs to "stand with Australia against China's weaponization of access to its markets."
Yet these critical voices and concerns have not yet shaped the wider public debate or perceptions of China to the extent they have in other Five Eyes countries. As Powles and Wallis observe, issues of foreign policy, including the New Zealand-China relationship, were largely absent from the debate leading up to the October election.
Also telling is that according to the Asia New Zealand Foundation's Perception of Asia Survey from November 2019, only 22 percent of New Zealanders saw China as posing a threat to New Zealand, while 16 percent felt that New Zealand should put effort into strengthening its relationship with China, with the top reason being trade.
These findings stand in marked contrast to a 2019 Pew Research Center poll which found that 60 percent of Americans have unfavorable views of China. And despite a majority of Australians considering New Zealand to be their country's "best friend," Australian public sentiment was far more aligned with that of the United States. A 2020 Lowy Institute poll found that Australians' trust in China was at a record low, with 77 percent of Australians saying they had little or no trust in China to act responsibly in the world, while an incredible 94 percent of Australians wanting Australia to reduce its economic dependence on China.
The reasons for this gulf in New Zealand public opinion and those of its traditional security partners aren't immediately clear. China is New Zealand's largest trading partner, and its economic importance is often taken as the reason New Zealand can't afford, or doesn't want, to take a more confrontational stance. Yet China is also Australia's largest partner by a considerable margin.
Two factors that Victoria University of Wellington's Catherine Churchman suggests could also be at play are New Zealand's mixed-member proportional electoral system, which may encourage politicians to stick to a middle ground rather than adopt a more "extreme" position, and the fact that New Zealand's political left and right cannot be taken as the equivalents of those in the U.S. and Australia. Those on the right tend to be mindful of New Zealand's economic interests in China, while there is a trend toward anti-Americanism within the New Zealand left.
Churchman also points out that domestic media coverage and the public's general knowledge of China still tend to be quite low.
What is clear is that with a somewhat mixed public opinion that hasn't yet resulted in heated public debate on the New Zealand-China relationship — and caught between larger and more powerful economic and security partners — New Zealand looks set to keep walking a fine line well into the future.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article are entirely the author's own and do not reflect the views of their employer or any other party.
Alex Smith is a writer and researcher from Aotearoa, New Zealand. She has a Master of Arts in East Asian Regional Studies from Columbia University. Prior to moving to New York, she worked as an analyst at the New Zealand Treasury, where she focused on justice sector policy and the annual budget. Read more
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