text:
Investment Focus
December 03, 2018
Coworking, Friend or Foe?
Investment Focus
Coworking, Friend or Foe?
December 03, 2018
For coworking operators, superlatives are easy to come by. Coworking spaces in the U.S. accounted for 17% of all office net absorption in 2017, 12% in Europe, and 14% in Asia.1 WeWork, the world's seventh largest startup and Manhattan's single largest office tenant, currently has a valuation larger than any office REIT, a chained annual growth rate of 90+% since its founding in 2010, and set out to open 1 million square feet of new space each month in 2018.2 It's no surprise that many participants in the office universe are searching for the right way to position themselves with respect to coworking, whether through imitation, collaboration, or differentiation.
For tenants, the primary factors in choosing coworking space are its flexibility, amenities, technology, community and immediate availability. At WeWork spaces in particular, the common areas' leather sofas, coffee and beer bars, neon slogans, and mix of entrepreneurial and innovative tenants all offer the opportunity to mix and connect with a vibrant broader community in spaces architects have designed to function as a "third place" between home and work.
Proprietary smart technology lets its users easily connect with each other and eventually, seamlessly customize their office space to their physical specs and preferences. And flexible lease lengths unlock the ability for tenants to grow or shrink their footprints as needed over the short run, providing optionality that typically isn't available in institutional real estate markets, albeit while adding to the risk in a coworking operator's cash flow.
For coworking operators, value is created by signing leases with office landlords at a meaningful discount to the revenue earned from its members. WeWork and other coworking spaces' operating margins are estimated to reach breakeven levels once locations reach 75% occupancy; or for more spaceconstrained markets like London or New York where per-square-foot revenues are higher, breakeven occupancy can be as low as 60%.3
For landlords, having a coworking space as a tenant offering brings a collaborative, creative millennial demographic to their buildings, and can highlight their other floors as the first place for tenants to look, once they are ready to expand into a traditional office lease. Coworking tenants can also help lease smaller spaces and layouts that may be less desirable for a traditional single tenant and harder for a landlord to fill. WeWork states that its locations can win 29% in rent premiums for landlords, and additionally, by increasing the utilization rate of existing office space as much as two- to three-times over, coworking can support significant added footfall and demand for ground floor retail and other building amenities.4
With millennials rapidly becoming the largest generation in the labor force worldwide, reshaping office space around their workstyles will, in our view, be a natural evolution for real estate investors. CBRE's Asia Pacific Occupier Survey 2018 identified four trends—a younger workforce, tight labor markets and the battle for talent, better mobile technology, and increased preference for agility and flexibility—driving decision-making among occupiers today.5 WeWork's pursuit of highly amenitized, collaborative, personalized, flexible, and centrally located office space is clearly intended to capitalize on these themes. Traditional corporate users, including consumer businesses and tech titans from IBM to Spotify, have also begun working with coworking operators to manage their real estate needs and workspaces more efficiently. Around a quarter of WeWork's revenue now comes from large companies like GE, Facebook, and Microsoft.6 For WeWork, these corporate users provide longer-term leases than its month-tomonth business. For the users, new FASB requirements to capitalize leases longer than one year on their balance sheets may spur more demand for coworking.7 Additionally, technological advances enable corporate real estate design and predictive data analytics teams to offer insights on how and when tenants use space most productively, and further minimize the space needed per employee, to maximize per-square-foot productivity. For example, one project for a large corporate client consolidated three floors of occupied space to two, while increasing common areas, programming space, and amenities to promote collaborative encounters and interaction.8
Therefore, because coworking both expands demand by bringing new users into office space, and compresses it by densifying the space per worker, the effects on office demand, in aggregate, are expected to be mixed. An estimate by Cushman & Wakefield suggests that of coworking's total net absorption, 30% to 40% is accretive to office demand.9 Bringing telecommuters and freelancers out of home offices and coffee shops and into rented office space falls in this accretive category. However, coworking space is also capturing and densifying a share of corporate flex demand, small tenant leasing, and core corporate office users—in effect filling the same market demand in a smaller amount of office space. This suggests that the long-term impact to office demand could range from a 3% increase to a 10% decrease, depending on how much core corporate office demand shifts into higher-density footprints.10
How far WeWork or other coworking operators can densify office fitouts also remains to be seen, with important long-term implications for office demand. While traditional rules of thumb of 225 square feet of space per worker have fallen to the 150 to 175 square foot range, a typical coworking space minimizes this to approximately 55 to 100 square feet per person. The base case usage factor is 75 square feet per person. However, because this average number includes expansive commons areas and flexible conference areas as well as personal seating, the dedicated space per person is typically much tighter: as low as 25 square feet. Trends in office design evolve over time, and it is possible that workers may conclude 75 square feet per person is not enough, particularly given the scarcity of talent may require landlords to expand space per worker as an incentive.
The higher density of coworking spaces also brings several new considerations to the forefront for office landlords. Estimated capital expenditure requirements are up to 50% higher than traditional office.11 High density buildouts put added burden on buildings' physical systems, increase security concerns, and typically have low reusability should a landlord get the space back. There is also the potential for coworking space to compete for the same tenants, and landlords must consider the credit of coworking operators. Even in a strong economic cycle, the average coworking member stays 20 months while an average traditional office lease duration is 5 years, and as industry giant WeWork pursues strong growth in membership, its revenue per user has fallen on a year-over-year basis. One analysis found that 23% of coworking centers are unprofitable.12
And while it's important to consider these tradeoffs in an economic upcycle, they come before considering the downside risk. Industry skeptics note that coworking revenue is generated by short term subscriptions, typically month-tomonth, which creates downside risk from the duration mismatch with long-term lease contracts. The shared workspace provider IWG, originally known as Regus, pursued a slightly differentiated space-as-a-service business model ahead of its October 2000 IPO, offering corporate clients global flexibility and turnkey office solutions, before declaring bankruptcy during the economic downturn when its revenues dried up while rent payments were still due. Today, IWG has a market capitalization of $2.9 billion with 52 million square feet leased worldwide,13 and WeWork's resiliency through a downturn has yet to be seen. Historically, office-using employment displays much higher economic sensitivity than does office demand, given the greater stability of contractual lease terms.14 The next recession, which many economic forecasters expect may occur in 2020- 2021, will be a true test of the coworking model and may lead to significant consolidation among providers.15
Recognizing the downside risk to demand, WeWork's leases are often structured with a capped corporate-level guarantee that burns down over time, limiting its corporate liability for the rent, but this doesn't provide comfort for the landlord who has WeWork as a tenant. Cap rates can reflect this uncertainty on the durability of WeWork leases, widening out by around 35-65 basis points for properties with 50% of net rentable area leased to coworking ventures. Therefore, although the pricing model and spatial buildout of coworking can increase the revenue per available square foot and NOI by as much as 50% to 60% over a traditional office lease, the inherent risk to this income increases as well. Ascribing a higher capitalization rate (or lower earnings multiple) to the higher income to reflect this increased risk, as per a Green Street Advisors analysis, has so far been relatively neutral to property value.16
Even so, structural forces—including technology, urbanization, and the sheer size of the millennial generation— along with regulatory changes and the corporate objectives to attract talent, increase productivity, and minimize costs, will continue to drive demand for more amenitized office space, with concierge-type services and flexible lease structures. Anecdotal data from large corporate tenants who are in the market for space demonstrates that, all else equal, some are requesting to locate in buildings with third-party coworking fitouts, considering the inbuilding access to coworking seats an attractive way to address their long-term need for flexibility. Accordingly, many landlords, brokerages, and other property management entities are beginning to offer coworking buildouts themselves. For landlords with higher structural vacancy in their buildings—whether older space, smaller floorplates, or unusual layouts— adding a coworking space and potentially partnering with an operator in a revenuebased rent structure, may be a natural way to raise property income and increase tenant engagement.
For core office property, typically with lower structural vacancy to fill and long-term, high-credit leases in place, Morgan Stanley Real Assets anticipates there may be a long-term need to design and offer office space with elevated service levels and higher-touch amenities. Pairing concierge/hospitality level service with better fitness centers, conference facilities, lobbies, personal care providers, restaurants, and top health and wellness fit-outs including superior air and water purification, will enhance the property experience and should support optimized rents and translate to better tenant retention through the economic cycle. Rising capital expenditures (particularly tenant improvements as a share of NOI) reflect this increased focus on providing top-tier amenities; so far, with new lease terms signed remaining above the historical average. Concierge property managers—whether the well-known coworking operators or new entrants with modern, agile facilities management capabilities—could increasingly support higher tenant satisfaction, better productivity in existing office space, and optimized demand.
Regardless of whether you believe WeWork or any other coworking ventures will ultimately succeed or fail, the coworking trend in and of itself is forcing landlords to rethink the design of their traditional office space to better cater to the needs of the technology-driven millennial labor force.


text:
From Goodreads.
You will kill. The only question is when.
In the dark days since the insidious Red Lung virus decimated the human population, vampires have risen to rule the crumbling cities and suburbs. Uncontested Princes hold sway over diminished ranks of humans: their "pets." In exchange for their labor, loyalty and of course, their blood, these pets are registered, given food and shelter, permitted to survive.
Unregistered humans cling to fringes, scavenging for survival. Allison Sekemoto and her fellow Unregistereds are hunted, not only by vampires, but by rabids, the unholy result of Red Lung-infected vampires feeding on unwary humans. One night, Allie is attacked by a pack of rabids, saved by an unlikely hero...and turned vampire.
Uncomfortable in her undead skin, Allie falls in with a ragtag crew of humans seeking a cure, or cures: for Rabidism and for Vampirism. She's passing for human...for now. But the hunger is growing and will not be denied. Not for friendship—not even for love.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Jaime's Review of The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa
19 comments:
awwwwwwwww yeah!ReplyDeleteReplies
My sentiments exactly ;)Delete
I love Julie Kagawa's writing and this book sounds just as awesome as her Iron Fey series. I can't wait to read this one when it comes out. Awesome review :)ReplyDeleteReplies
Thanks Tiffany! Yeah this one definitely blew my mind!I can't decide if I like it better than the Iron Fey but it's close!Delete
YAY! I'm glad you loved it too!! Thanks for the comment on my review. I haven't seen Escape from New York, I'll have to check that out! Funny we both thought Walking Dead! So true, though! Can't wait for the next book! OH, and I'd love to talk about who you think she might end up with in the end.....ReplyDeleteReplies
Ooh Andye you must! It's got Kurt Russell when he's still hawt and the story is awesome if you can handle the 80's cheesiness ;) ;)Delete
Okay I'm jealous you got to read this book early! I think many other readers are too. Great review!ReplyDeleteReplies
I heard from a little birdie that this was going to be up on netgalley so *fingers crossed* that you get to read it soon!Delete
- AnonymousMarch 7, 2012 at 6:54 AM
Oh man! I am stoked that this is getting such great reviews - I cannot wait to read it, having LOVED Julie's other books. Is it April yet?! *winks* Thanks so much for the review!ReplyDeleteReplies
It'll be April soon enough :)yep I'm a huge fan of Julies books!Delete
Great review and whoa! what a quote. I can hardly wait to read it!ReplyDeleteReplies
Thanks Sophie ((Hugs)) and yeah it was one of my favorites! I loved Kanin :)Delete
Awesome review!!! I'm even more excited to read this one now!!! :DReplyDeleteReplies
Yes Anna! I can't wait to hear your thoughts :DDelete
Of course Julie is also on my auto-read list. From the passage,Kanin kind of reminds me of Valek - demeanor and stance, wry grin, private inner monologue shining through. Dangit, another one for the TBR!ReplyDeleteReplies
Haha yeah he is very Valek-like which is always a god thing! I know you're going to love it Marissa :)Delete
I'm really excited about this one. I think I'll pre-order it next week! :DReplyDelete
I'm so excited that you loved this book so much. I can't wait to read it. It's on my wish list. Thanks for the great review :)ReplyDelete
Can't WAIT to read this one!!! :)ReplyDelete

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Mexican and US officials say they are working to put a freed drug lord back behind bars, although there is no sign the US has taken formal legal steps to seize Rafael Caro Quintero.
Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Jose Antonio Meade told reporters on Tuesday that Mexican officials are seeking to reverse an appeals court's decision last week that freed Caro Quintero for purported procedural errors in the original prosecution.
Caro Quintero was 28 years into a 40-year sentence for helping orchestrate the 1985 killing of US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena. He has disappeared from the public eye since his release.
A US law-enforcement official familiar with the case said the administration of US President Barack Obama believes that the Mexican federal government was blindsided by the decision and that there was no complicity on the part of high-ranking officials in Mexico City.
Mexico is actively looking for Caro Quintero with US help, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the new investigation.
Caro Quintero remained on the DEA's most-wanted list during his jail term, but Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told reporters that there was no US request for his extradition pending at the moment the prisoner was freed.
Murillo Karam said he was not sure if the US had filed such a request since Caro Quintero's release on Friday last week.
US officials declined to comment on what action they might have taken.
The attorney general said the US would have to file charges separate from those in the Camarena murder case that the Mexican court overturned.
Caro Quintero walked free after a three-judge federal appeals court in the western state of Jalisco overturned his sentence in Camarena's kidnapping, torture and murder.
The panel ordered Caro Quintero's immediate release on procedural grounds, saying he should have been tried in a state court instead of federal court.
"We'll have to find a way to reverse the decision," Meade said.
"We're going to use every tool that we have at our disposal," he added.
Murillo Karam has said the judges should have referred the case to another court instead of freeing Caro Quintero in the middle of the night with no public notification.
US officials say they had no notice of the court decision and members of Congress have called it a setback to US-Mexican cooperation on law enforcement.


text:
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text:
Monday, August 20, 2007
Can I have your password, honey?
For some reason that freaks me out. I would never expect anyone I was in a relationship with to share their email password or bank pin with me unless it was a shared account or an emergency, in which case I would ask them to change it immediately after the emergency was over.
Of course, there are different ways of looking at everything, but everybody has some private spaces and should be allowed them. Having a personal space does not necessarily mean it is being misused. If I don't want someone reading my messages, even a boyfriend, it does not mean I'm up to no good.
If my friend is fine with sharing his password, that's his decision. But I don't think by doing so the two are bringing any more openness into the relationship. Because he is going to watch what he says and he's warned his friends too. So all that has been added is a layer of subterfuge.
I no longer feel comfortable mailing my friend. You may argue that since I'm not flirting with him or bitching about his girl or something like that in the mail, I have nothing to hide and the fact that she reads the mails shouldn't bother me. But it does.
What would you do if your partner asked for your password?
47 comments:
- Bikerdude said...
I'd just say No. Point blank. And I'd probably pre-empt any emo spiel about it by saying "And no emo spiel about it either thanks honey" if I dont barf before I say "honey" ie :p
Nice blog :)
- August 19, 2007 at 11:08 PM
- confused said...
Say no. I agree. Itna pyar bhi theek nahi...
- August 20, 2007 at 12:28 AM
- Rahul said...
We have each others' passwords. But that doesn't mean we read each others' mail, except on request. ("I'm busy, you have the laptop with you, can you check whether so-and-so has replied to me?")
I think, if you can trust each other not to snoop, what's the problem? And if not, why are you partners?
- August 20, 2007 at 1:18 AM
- Semantic Overload said...
The issue, like you rightly pointed out, is not about trust. Its about privacy. The reason why I want to keep my communications private is not that its sensitive. It is so because my communications are nobody else's business. Sometimes, not even my significant other's.
In a more philosophical sense, your email is your identity online, its a means of authenticating yourself to whoever you are communicating with. Now by allowing someone else access to your email, you are compromising that identity (and not necessarily to the other party's knowledge).
If you and your significant other would like to blur your identity boundaries, then that's your decision. However, it is also your responsibility to ensure that this fact is communicated to everyone who is communicating with that email/identity.
Personally, I would like to know who the email is coming from. I don't want to have to guess or verify if it was my friend or his/her significant other who sent that email.
Additionally, there is a very real threat of misuse. If you are in a relationship, then you are bound to have fights, misunderstandings. You dont want someone who is emotionally charged against you to have access to your email accounts and your communications. That is just asking for trouble.
- August 20, 2007 at 3:15 AM
- Patrix said...
Well, in our case we know each other's passwords not because we have to or we agreed to. It is merely utilitarian. But there is that implicit understanding that you would access the accounts unless asked to.
I would say, sharing of password is for the reasons that Rahul suggests in his first paragraph.
- August 20, 2007 at 5:25 AM
- Bombay Addict said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- August 20, 2007 at 11:17 AM
- Niket said...
I concur with Rahul and Patrix.
In fact, I am sure that in their cases, as in mine, the password wasn't asked for... it just happended to be shared.
In fact, if my situation was like your friend's, I would have refused to give the passowrd to my wife.
"And if not, why are you partners?"
That would be true in an ideal world. People are suspicious, possessive, feel they ought to share everything, feel that the partner doesn't need his/her private space, or more than one of the above.
- August 20, 2007 at 11:19 AM
- Bombay Addict said...
No way. Sounds cootchie coo at best and intrusive at worst.
Convenience is one thing, but honestly I don't see how my partner reading / replying to my mails makes life easier for me.
If I'm not around, well, there is a concept of "out-of-office" even in gmail. And its not like I need to access my mails every second (in which case you now have crackberry, mobile applications, etc.). So that takes care of ease-of-access, timeliness, etc.
Also, really I don't see how all of above affects my relationship with my partner.
Yet, this is a choice that couples make and as long as its cool between them, duniya ka kya.
N - that was one corny incident. I think I'd freak out too if it happened to me.
- August 20, 2007 at 11:26 AM
- IdeaSmith said...
If I really liked him, I'd probably login in front of him and then later, change the password. Not recommended though, I see your point of layering again. Not to mention inconveniencing other people for the sake of pseudo-'openness' in one's relationship. GOod post.
- August 20, 2007 at 2:17 PM
- Mayuresh Gaikwad said...
Have shared passwords with my g/f but as some readers metioned, they just happened to be shared ..... (No I do not know if she swoops into my mailbox, I do not, unless asked to - but I have reasons to believe that she does not do it as we keep forgetting each others passwords, so when a request is made, the password is promptly muttered on the pnhone) It is usually .... please see if there is an email from my Boss / from a US client / etc. if she does not have access to the net at some time.
And I think some things just cannot be shared with your partner, they have to remain with your guy-friends (I guess it is the same with the girls). So please do not woop into your partner's mailbox even if you know the passwords
- August 20, 2007 at 3:10 PM
- Rahul said...
niket - yes, in other words the password was given, not asked for.
semantic overlord -
"If you are in a relationship, then you are bound to have fights, misunderstandings. You dont want someone who is emotionally charged against you to have access to your email accounts and your communications."
I don't want to sound virtuous but, while fights will and do happen, neither of us would think of using each other's email accounts to "get back" in such a way. With honest disagreements (which are hopefully the only kind with someone you trust), it only demeans you to stoop to something like that. But we wouldn't even do that with someone we totally detest.
So do you always log out from your mail when you get up from your home computer to fetch a coffee? Do you also have a separate postal mailbox for your partner, with a separate lock and key? How do you ensure that it is not opened by your partner? Our postman seems to prefer to leave letters with one end sticking out of the slot, so you don't need the key. He's also been known to misdeliver our mail to our neighbours, or vice versa.
If you're not worried about such things, why is e-mail different?
- August 20, 2007 at 3:22 PM
- Morpheus said...
it matters not. I say what I want and let other people say what they want in their emails to me. If he noses around and reads something he did not like, well he will know not to do it next time. I don't think its a test of love or trust. It sometimes is just mechanics of logins saved on a laptop. Not a big deal according to me.
- August 20, 2007 at 3:25 PM
- n said...
thanks, hopefully, you'll stick around?
in fact, taking this further... I would see a partner's asking for the password as signalling to the fact that they do not understand or appreciate concepts of personal space. That would make me like them lesser.
glad you agree. Though I don't think it's a question of love
giving a password is different from asking for it. If my partner gave me a password cause he wanted me to check something for him, i would remind him to change it the next time he was near a computer.
I don't think I need to prove my trust by sharing my password. The fact that I'm sharing my life with the person is evidence enuf.
but like I said in the post, if it works for you, then it works for you...
[semantic overload]
well put. communications are not private only because they're sensitive. but because they are personal and no one else's business. Not even my partner's unless i choose to share something particular. absolutely right (nods vigorously)
refer what I said to Rahul.
that's right -- asking for and giving voluntarily are very different things. Personally, i don't see myself giving it, unless for a specific one time use. My private spaces are important to me, even in a relationship.
[bombay addict]
yea, fully freaked out. haven't mailed or chatted with him since :D
in fact, the other day, another friend's wife was logged on from his email address. i wish they'd just change the status or something to clarify who it is that is online. again, not that anything indiscrete was said or even wished to be said...
as you seemed to realise even as you were typing that, that would just be pretending. what's the point?
yep, snooping is definitely a bad thing. i've known of people doing it. If it's not email, it's the last calls list on the phone.
since you bring it up... a couple I know once had a misunderstanding and during it, the guy checked his wife's mail. He didn't find anything incriminating. and felt like shit later. it was something done on impulse, in a moment of weakness. it's something he doesn't forgive himself for tho his wife has. my point: everyone has moments of weakness.
that's one way of looking at it :D if he snoops, let him reap!
but if someone asked for it, you'd them to get lost, right?
- August 20, 2007 at 3:47 PM
- Santosh said...
Like most people I share my password with my wife and vice-versa just for emergencies. But we dont ever check each other's emails unless asked to.
- August 20, 2007 at 7:24 PM
- witnwisdumb said...
Huh. Weird. My girlfriend and I know each other's password, but we don't check each others' mail unless asked to. And yes, I agree, what's the point of giving your girlfriend your password, if you're only going to put up a facade and ask everybody to 'watch what they say' to you?!
- August 20, 2007 at 7:42 PM
- Amrita said...
I did it once. Just once. And I learned my lesson. I would say: N.O. if anybody else asked me for it. And I've yet to come across someone who actively asked for their girl/boyfriend's password who didn't use it to snoop, usually to their own grief.
People like Rahul, Patrix, etc not included. I agree that's a different thing :)
- August 20, 2007 at 8:33 PM
i would stop being their partner. ahem.
- August 21, 2007 at 10:25 PM
it's strange, i just remembered now that i read ur post, that i have often seen this weird activity in public places. at a coffee shop, a couple sits making conversation and the boyfriend asks the girlfriend for her purse. as she makes faces, he opens it and checks out all the items in it. what kind of relationships ARE these, i ask?
- August 21, 2007 at 10:30 PM
- Sathish said...
Even in a relation, the other persons privacy should be respected. Sharing passwords is akin to following the person whereve he/she goes!!
If you trust your partner so much then why share password?? Share other things in life!! :-)
- August 22, 2007 at 10:55 AM
- n said...
I'm sure you'd never ask one another for the password. Givin voluntarily is different
kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
you seem to know exactly what I'm talking about :)
yea, thats what I almost said in a comment earlier. I mean, ending it is a little drastic, but I would surely question my being with them.
and yea, I've seen that too. It's the weirdest, isn't it?
- August 22, 2007 at 10:56 AM
- n said...
exactly. a person should have the right to be able to decide how much to share
- August 22, 2007 at 10:58 AM
- Paavani said...
Giving password to partner is not matter of only trust but more of convenience.
At times, when Internet is down or something or an important mail is coming.
Its should be mutual without forcing or saying, What's your password?
If someone comfortable- give it. If want to change, change it.
If you trust someone you already know him/her and feel comfortable, share it.
- August 23, 2007 at 4:26 PM
- Dadoji said...
Have spent so many years together now knowing all the passwords that it doesn't matter. We anyway share with each other all we come to know of.
- August 26, 2007 at 4:59 AM
- Shreya said...
i feel the same way about having some private space of ones own..but I gave my password to my boyfriend anyway,since it was almost becoming an issue with him.*sigh*..erm,was I wrong in giving it to him when I so didnt want to?
- August 31, 2007 at 11:51 AM
hell no :)
I would quote Kahlil Gibran at them.. may there be spaces in your togetherness etc etc
- September 4, 2007 at 9:01 AM
@shreya - you are the only one who can decide if it was right or so.
But girl, you may want to get a different account that he does not know of ;)
- September 4, 2007 at 9:03 AM
- n said...
being forced to do something doesn't quite sound right.
Oh yea, that's a lovely one. I'd almost forgotten it...
"let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."
Thank you for reminding me.
- September 4, 2007 at 3:59 PM
Well, Now, you don't want to hurt the other person if such a situation arises. [Firstly, I would be quite uncomfortable if I were seeing somebody who happens to be the 'asking-the-password' types] So you ask carefully: "...And you need the password because...??" and you add jokingly, "...coz you want to pry into my email and stuff..."
If the other person is a bit sensible, s/he would end up giving you some bull reason. And you counter that by giving some bull password. Simple. The other person can't come back to you and say "Hey, that password didn't work..." Coz' s/he is not supposed to be checkin' your email anyway!
Damn, I am EviL.
- September 11, 2007 at 9:02 PM
b4kOiw Your blog is great. Articles is interesting!
- October 26, 2007 at 12:54 PM
HUKhby Thanks to author.
- October 26, 2007 at 11:29 PM
MyypAs actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going to pass that on to a couple of people.
- October 27, 2007 at 12:29 AM
actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going to pass that on to a couple of people.
- October 27, 2007 at 12:43 AM
Nice Article.
- October 27, 2007 at 1:01 AM
actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going to pass that on to a couple of people.
- October 28, 2007 at 12:39 AM
Please write anything else!
- October 28, 2007 at 1:29 AM
- October 28, 2007 at 8:03 PM
Hello all!
- October 30, 2007 at 11:37 AM
Nice Article.
- October 30, 2007 at 2:52 PM
Wonderful blog.
- October 30, 2007 at 6:46 PM
1INiJ1 Thanks to author.
- October 31, 2007 at 11:54 PM
actually, that's brilliant. Thank you. I'm going to pass that on to a couple of people.
- November 1, 2007 at 12:22 AM
- the mad momma said...
Just noticed a trend in the comments. its mostly married ppl or those who've been together a long time who share passwords. mostly without blinking. aftera point somet things cease to matter. for instance my husband and i share two children. a password is the least of our concerns. though as someone mentioned, its more convenience. net is down and i ask him to check something at office etc.
though i must admit that i would never have shared it with a boyfriend or friend.
- November 21, 2007 at 3:37 PM
- greekalphabet said...
It happened with me. I refused. Now he thinks I am hiding something. Bull.
I am not. Its just that I like to have some space in the world justto myself and if that space happens to be on cyberspace, its still just mine.
- November 21, 2007 at 9:36 PM
someone i know once had shared all his email passwords with the girlfriend.
when they broke up, in a fit of rage she changed all the passwords to all their email accounts
he was jacked.
lol. dont want that happening do you
- November 22, 2007 at 6:58 PM
and btw - I think the only time you share passwords with the boyfriend/girlfriend is with ur first bf/gf.
after that you get wiser. :)
- November 22, 2007 at 6:58 PM
- SGS said...
nice article.
- May 26, 2008 at 4:12 AM
You are mistaken. Let's discuss it. Write to me in PM, we will talk.
- March 14, 2010 at 5:14 PM


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HTS Theological Studies
On-line version ISSN 2072-8050
Print version ISSN 0259-9422
Herv. teol. stud. vol.64 n.1 Pretoria Mar. 2008
A place to share: Some thoughts about the meaning of territory and boundaries in our thinking about God and humanity
Riet Bons-Storm*
University of Groningen, The Netherlands
This article proffers some thoughts in reply to the following question: how can we think about God in a theology that takes into account the concept of place in such a way that we are able to live together in a salvific way with others, sharing a place as equals? Concepts such as "territory" and "territoriality" are helpful, because they can be linked with "identity" and the need to feel safe. Boundaries and boundary markers such as walls play an important role in conflicts. The possibility of a "liminal space" at a boundary where eye-to-eye relationships may be possible helps to make "the other", the stranger, a human being with her/his own needs and vulnerability. Using the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as an example, images of God and their impact on the possibility of sharing the land are explored. Hagar, herself a stranger, experiences God's life-saving attention and names God "God of seeing".
"We must recognize that our views of God are not in themselves so tremendously important. What is decisively important is the dynamic developed by faith, the way it has an effect on world history." (Gerstenberger 2002:305)
The stretch of land on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean where the state of Israel has established its authority is intersected by a wall that winds its way among the hills, through the olive groves, the villages, cutting off and blocking even main roads. Nine metres high and many kilometres long, with barbed wire on top, it towers over the land, always built on land where Palestinians live. An almost unbelievable sense of threat emanates from the massive grey concrete structure. At a physical level, Jews and Palestinians can no longer see each other. At every level, they become strangers to one another, more than they have ever been before. Communication is made impossible. The gates in the wall are guarded by very young Israeli soldiers, mostly immigrants from Ethiopia. Guns at the ready, they walk around, sometimes high above people at ground level, as the soldiers move on catwalks. To pass through the gates, Palestinians must face hours of frustration and of intimidation. Walls dominate the land of Israel.
For both groups of people, both Jews and Palestinians, the land is vitally important. It is the place where they belong, the place of their history, with all its emotions, positive and negative - the land of their roots, the land of hope for their children. Both groups regard this land as being connected to their God. In precisely this place, and all the more intensely in Jerusalem, they are aware of their faith. This place nurtures their faith in God and in their future. They look at this land as a holy place. Both groups live by their own narratives about their entitlement to live there. According to these narratives, they are the children of Isaac or of Ishmael, sons and daughters of Sarah or of Hagar. Although they believe that they have the same father, they live as enemies.
In my own country, the Netherlands, there are no visible walls between groups of people, but there are invisible barriers. More and more, the street becomes a place where people fight these barriers, resulting in violence. Indigenous Dutch people claim "their" street. It used to be so quiet and peaceful, they say. And is not the whole country rightly theirs? "Strangers" - people from the Middle East whose fathers were invited to come to the Netherlands as workers in the 1960s and 1970s, people from the former colonies of Surinam and the Antilles (who therefore have full Dutch citizenship), and refugees from everywhere in the world claim the street as well. In the street, the violence that smoulders in numerous places in society erupts. Then it becomes obvious that indigenous and non-indigenous Dutch deny each other the right to be there.
Many indigenous Dutch people have a deep attachment to their small, densely populated country. They see themselves as hard-working, freedom-loving people. The narratives of their national history tell them that they fought a big country, Spain, to gain their freedom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and that they wrested their land from the sea with their own hands.
The Netherlands is a secularized country, but many Dutch people nevertheless join heartily in singing the sixth verse of the national anthem: "Mijn schild ende betrouwen zijt Gij, o God mijn Heer" ["You are my shield and trust, oh God my Lord"]. For nearly all Dutch people, it is quite self-evident that a national church service is held on the eve of Liberation Day, 4 May. Consciously or subconsciously, many indigenous Dutch people feel they are entitled by a Divine right to live in their country, to own it. They are Dutch and as such they have a rooted identity that they can be proud of.
"The Netherlands is full!" right-wing political parties shout, and many agree with them. However, the Dutch have to share their country, their land, their streets, with others. In the streets, suspicion and hostility are born in the clash between cultures and religions (Gopin 2002:21 ff), because this public space has to be shared.
Human beings need a safe place, a space they feel entitled to live in. In her autobiographical novel My Place (1978), indigenous Australian Sally Morgan illustrates how important such a place is. The novel describes Sally's quest for "her" land, the land of her family group, now occupied by white settlers for more than a century. These settlers claim that they have a right to live there.
John Inge (2003) argues that place, vital as it is for humans, is not an important item in theology. He argues that time plays the leading part, for instance, in thinking about the longing for the Kingdom to come. Nevertheless, place moulds our experience as embodied creatures in a very significant way. The importance of place is shown in the many ways in which it is expressed in figures of speech or idiomatic expressions, for instance, "to know one's place" or "the place of women in society". Place in the literal sense refers to a particular part of the earth's surface and it is necessary for an embodied human being, so that she/he has somewhere to stand on, to live on. She/he needs part of the surface of this earth to survive. On some part of the earth, she/he needs to feel entitled to inhabit some room: she/he needs a "territory". If that is denied to a person, she/he is nowhere, she/he is nobody.
Nevertheless, human beings move about, they travel and cross boundaries. When they do, they become strangers in some other place. Abraham can be regarded as the prototype of the stranger. Mobility has increased a lot since Abraham's time. Nowadays, there are a great many strangers: they are tourists, guests, immigrants, "expats", colonists, soldiers, refugees: none of them are in their own place; they share the place of others, for better or for worse.
In this article I suggest some thoughts about the question of how we can think about God in a theology that takes into account place in such a way that we are able to live together in a salvific way with others on this earth. It seems to me that Christian ethics, however complicated they may be, often boil down to this "sharing of a place in a salvific way". In the article, I explore the meaning of territory and of boundaries and the relationship of God to place.
In 1973, the Dutch/North American psychologists Cornelis B Bakker and Marianne K Bakker-Rabdau wrote a book that greatly clarified human relations, No trespassing (I used the Dutch edition, Verboden toegang). They use the term "territoriality" as a tool to understanding people and the way people relate to each other. They contend that territoriality "permeates every aspect of human existence. Constantly a person divides everything in categories of possession: my and your, his and her, our and their. This territorial index helps him to evaluate himself in relation to others and serves him in times of conflict" (Bakker & Bakker-Rabdau 1973:50). Being territorial means being defined by a territory. A territory is that part of the physical or cultural space in which a person feels entitled to live. She/he needs grounds for this entitlement and finds them, for instance, in the sacred texts of a religion, either written (e.g. in the case of the Israelis and Palestinians) or retold from generation to generation and transmitted via an oral tradition (as in the case of the Australian Aboriginals). Narratives about the history of a place can also give a strong justification of territorial claims, as it does for many Dutch people. As long as such a "justification" is believed to be true, a particular group's claim on a territory can remain strong.
Because human beings feel that they need a territory, they tend to define and guard the boundaries of whatever territory they have taken possession of. Others may be let in, but only on conditions set by the owner of the territory. Inside the boundaries of a territory, the person it belongs to can feel free to be what she/he is. She/he can feel safe, which is very important. She/he is entitled to defend her/himself against invasions. All human beings develop strategies to guard their territory; and aggression is often seen as the best defence. When it comes to territoriality, aggression can also be used in an endeavour to enlarge a territory and annex (part of) someone else's territory. Neighbours very easily become enemies. If one does not feel strong - or is not regarded as strong in a culture - compared to possible invaders, the strategy for safety can be to minimize one's territory and let the (aggressive) other in without violence, as far as it is still possible to survive in what remains of the territory. The smallest territory one can inhabit is one's own body. Rape is an invasion and annexation of that minimal territory and consequently reduces a raped person to nobody.
In addition to stressing the importance of a physical territory, Bakker and Bakker-Rabdau (1973) point out the significance of territory in a socio-cultural sense. The sum of a person's leading ideologies or religious convictions, expertise and special skills, can also be understood as the person's territory. This is the domain where a person is convinced that she/he is entitled to take decisions and implement them. Territoriality as such is therefore formative for a person's sense of identity.
Most of the conflicts between people can be interpreted as battles about the boundaries of their territories. This applies to conflicts in relations between partners, in marriages or in families, but also between groups. The Israeli author Amos Oz calls the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "no war between religions, no war between cultures, but simply a dispute about real estate" (Oz 2004:7).
The North American psychologist Ruthellen Josselson (1996) contends that every person does indeed need a territory and she pays a lot of attention to boundaries. What makes people use their gifts and limitations in the most positive way is the experience that these boundaries match their potential, do not restrict them and give them a sense of safety and security that nurtures healthy self-esteem. Such a healthy sense of self-esteem, based on a person's possibilities and limitations, provides the best opportunity not to spend too much effort on fortifying boundaries. They can stay low, transparent supplied with gates. If a person feels safe enough, it is possible for her/him to share a reasonably large part of her/his personal territory with another person who respects her/his need for self-esteem. If this sharing occurs, the partners come to feel "embedded", as if they have "a we to claim" (Josselyn 1996:178). It shapes the conviction of being entitled to inhabit a piece of this earth as a person with gifts and limitations, but at the same time being a partner in a larger domain, or another domain, belonging to a group or another person that acknowledges one's identity - one's personal history included - as one of its own.
Josselyn (1996:98) stresses the importance of eye-to-eye contact across boundaries: "In eye-to-eye relating is the recognition that we have meaning to others." In order to make this contact possible, boundary markers such as walls have to be permeable and supplied with gates. To lessen the ever-present possibility of conflicts arising at boundaries, people who are "strangers" to each other (even a neighbour or a friend, even a lover, is a stranger in the sense that she/he inhabits a different personal territory) have to seek possibilities to "see" each other, to see the "stranger" as an embodied person, vulnerable, always ready to defend her/himself with or without violence.
Spanish theologian Mercedes Navarro (2003) also highlights boundaries as a concept. At the boundary, she contends, "liminal space" is possible. At boundaries, where confrontation, competition and violence so easily occur, a virtual no-man's-land can be imagined. This liminal space gives people from or with different territories the possibility of thinking about their own identity and that of the other. There they can seek opportunities to "see" one another, to suspend for a moment the exclusiveness of the different ideologies and value systems that validate the entitlement to each territorial claim. In such a liminal space, the founding narratives for these claims can be told and critically examined, and openings to a shared narrative can be explored.
Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar, was one of the first to focus on the preoccupation with place in the Bible. He contends that, in the Bible, place figures as a primary category of faith and that land is a central theme. Not meaninglessness, but rootlessness is the greatest threat for a human being (Brueggemann 1978:4). His argument reminds me of Mary Phil Korzak's translation of Genesis At the start (1992). She translates the Hebrew term haadam with "the groundling". All other translations I have looked at simply translate the Hebrew term with "man". But Adam, the prototype of all human beings, came from the earth and would in time return into the earth, and he needed a piece of the earth to live on during his life. He had to share the earth. God gave him Eve, blessed both of them and said: "Be fruitful, increase, fill the earth "
The problems about sharing a territory, nowadays often painfully experienced in a great many places, become particularly embattled in what is called "the Holy Land". The conflicts there have repercussions in the whole of the Middle East and indeed in the whole world. I focus on these conflicts as an example of an endeavour to think about God and territoriality.
The Old Testament text plays an important role in the conflict about the possession of "the Holy Land", Israel/Palestine. Jews have a firm conviction that this piece of the earth is the Promised Land, promised to the Jews to dwell in, exclusively. According to their exegesis of the Tanak (Old Testament). God gave this place to the Jews as their territory. This religious vindication, justifying silent or aggressive immigration into a land inhabited by other people who call it their place is made stronger by a claim of the Jews that they are entitled to compensation for their deprivation of a territory for centuries on end, more than once. This deprivation was made even more burdensome as they became strangers in the most negative sense: Jews were despised, forced to be slaves, isolated in small ghettoes, tortured, raped and murdered by the millions. They experienced, in body and soul, what it means to be the stranger. Everybody with a heart wants to justify the Jewish claim to Israel as a territory of their own, but everybody who thinks further becomes very uneasy. Is God willing to give the Jews a territory at the expense of others? Are the others, the ammim, the goyim, the other peoples, Palestinians included, of lesser value in God's eyes?
Jewish writer Marc Gopin states that a key category in thinking about the exclusive claim of the Jews to the land is chosenness (Gopin 2002:13). He contends that meaning has to be given to this category in the context of the narratives in which it is used in the text which is the context of a family myth. Gopin (2002:8) explains: "I use 'myth' in the sense of a story that contains some ultimate and enduring truth, and a way of making sense of amorphous reality, for those who believe in it." A shared myth allows big conflicts to be understood by the human mind and absorbed by the human heart (Gopin 2002:8). The Hebrew biblical myth is a narrative about the ups and downs of a family, Abraham's family. Abraham is called av hamon goyim [father of many peoples]. And indeed, Abraham did have more than one son - his first child was Ishmael (by his second wife Hagar) and his second son was Isaac (by his first wife Sarah). In Genesis 25, the sons of another wife, Ketura, are also mentioned. The main hermeneutics of the biblical narrative about this family developed a myth that made it impossible for the offspring of the two sons to share Abraham's estate after his death. "In Jewish rabbinic interpretation, Isaac is the key to Jewish lineage, Ishmael to Arab and Islamic lineage, and Esau, Jacob's brother, is the key-symbol for Roman/European/Christian lineage. The separation of these three relatives - and their animosity - is the key to the rabbinic mythical account of later history and their tragedies" (Gopin 2002:9). The stories about Sarah and Hagar in Genesis 16 and Genesis 21 reinforce the claims of Isaac as the legal heir of his father. We hear stories of rivalry between two wives and of life-threatening measures taken to safeguard Isaac's rights. In these stories Sarah speaks and acts as somebody who is in charge. Hagar is a stranger, an Egyptian servant. Sarah's words and Abraham's consent turn Hagar into a helpless victim. The key event in the story is that Hagar and her son are expelled, sent away into the desert. Abraham gives them some provisions for the road, but they are insufficient. Ishmael nearly dies.
But into this family drama enters another figure: the messenger of God. This messenger opens Hagar's eyes to a well, to the possibility to survive. Hagar is convinced that God has seen her and has saved her and her son's life. She, the stranger, gives a name to God, a name like every true name for God, born from her experience with God. "You, God of seeing, for she said: have I not seen also after He saw me?" (Gn 16:13 in the translation by Mary Phil Korzak 1992). According to Genesis 16:18, Abraham gives their son the name Ishmael: "God hears". It is clear that the text favours the rights of Isaac to inherit the land, but also shows that God does not abandon Hagar and Ishmael. The texts of Genesis do not separate them completely: according to Genesis 25:9, Isaac and Ishmael bury their father together. The text is ambiguous about the relationship of these two brothers, but its interpreters are univocal in seeing them as rivals. Isaac's sons are seen as God's favourites, the chosen ones, entitled to live in the land, and they claim that only they have this right. The assumption is that a father cannot love both sons equally.
To understand things or human beings as equal does not fit into our usual way of thinking. Perhaps based upon children's deep psychological need to possess the love of their father (or mother) exclusively, or at least to possess their love in a very special and unique way, it is very difficult in our cultures to imagine that people can share a position equally (see Bons-Storm 2007:31-49). Perhaps it is therefore also difficult to think and act on the assumption that God can love Her/His "peoples" equally. But love, unlike any other thing I know, is a commodity that grows when it is given to more people.
Writing about the "promised land", Brueggemann contends that the narratives of the Bible acknowledge the human need to belong to a certain place, where the roots of a community are experienced and where its members can feel safe, empowered by the often religiously based conviction that they "belong" there. The land of Israel as the "promised land" fulfils this role for Jews, because for them it is a place alive with memories of experiences with their God. But this love for eretz Israel has its counterpart in the love for its territory of every group of people, for every nation. The uniqueness of the love of the Jews for the land of Israel lies not only in the emotional and religious experience the Jews have in relation to this particular place, but in its theological intensity (Inge 2003:37). This means that in the theological thinking of the Jews, as inscribed in their holy texts, they stress that they have had intense emotional and spiritual experiences with their God in this place. God and the Holy Land as their territory have become entwined.
The texts of Genesis may be ambiguous, but there are many texts in the Old Testament that clearly say that God has given the Holy Land only to the children of Isaac, for example, Joshua's speech to the tribes of Israel. Before he dies, Joshua gives the Israelites the founding story of their identity as the owners of the Holy Land as their territory, the land where they - the descendants of Isaac - shall worship God, the Eternal One. We read in Joshua 24:3: "And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed and gave him Isaac."
Who is this God that, according to the religious conviction of many Jews and Christians, gives a certain group of people a land to invade, to conquer and to possess, at the expense of the people who already live there? In his book Theologies in the Old Testament (note the plural) E S Gerstenberger (2002) summarises opinions about the development of the God worshipped by the Israelites. His argument is not altogether new to theologians (even if it is for many lay people), but it has to be taken seriously when we think about the religious claims of the Jews regarding Israel as their territory: "In the Hebrew tradition, Yahweh, the warrior God, is quite clearly initially a tribal deity, only secondarily does he become the divine supreme head of the nation and also of the family" (Gerstenberger 2002:22). The pre-Jahwistic tradition had many deities, male and female, all attached to a certain settlement or tribal region. The names of these deities live on in the names of towns: Anathoth must be connected with the goddess Anath; Kiriath-baal (Jos 15:60) means the "city of Baal". Based on the fact that there are only a few city names with "JHWH" in them, it may be assumed that JHWH was worshipped not as a city god, but as a tribal warrior god, who led his tribe into battle to defend its territory and, if possible, enlarge it (Gerstenberger 2002:101-102). This JHWH is a god of thunderstorms and earthquakes, as Judges 5:4-5 tells us. There was already a cult of JHWH in the pre-state period (Gerstenberger 2002:138), but the cult of JHWH as the only God, guaranteeing the identity of Israel as a nation with its own territory, dates back to the period of the kingdom(s) and the exilic and post-exilic periods. The verses of the "Hear Israel " in Deuteronomy 6:4-6 stress this cult of the One God. Gerstenberger (2002:274) concludes: "Israel may concentrate on its God, who has made his will known - that is a commandment for self-preservation. It concerns the existence of the community of faith, not the existence of God. The exclusiveness of worship of Yahweh asserted here is important in this moment of the Babylonian captivity and in the overwhelming powerful world of the gods of the rulers". The exclusive claims of Israel as an ethnic group and as a state in eretz Israel could be based on a myth at whose centre JHWH, the fearsome warrior god, became intertwined with the features of the national, exilic and post-exilic ideas about JHWH.
There is not only one image of God in the Old Testament or in the whole Bible - there are many. We do not know how or what God really is. However, we do know how different images of God work. People choose or are inspired to choose a certain image that has consequences: either to the benefit of only one group of people, or salvific for all humankind.
Jesus is depicted as a person who experienced himself as being without a territory, a stranger himself (Mt 8:20 and Lk 9:58). He was expelled from society and killed. He chose to hear texts that speak about a God who does justice to Jews, but also to strangers, and who expands his love to all people.
There are concepts in the Old Testament that disrupt the notion of God as the One who exclusively has the wellbeing of the Jews at heart: the stranger and all people.
Abraham, the Jews' founding father, was himself a stranger in a land where other people lived. Genesis 23, the story of Sarah's death and burial, shows Abraham as a humble immigrant without his own land, a "sojourner" asking the lords of the land for a place to bury his beloved wife. He acquired a field and a cave in the vicinity of modern-day Hebron. For a long time, the descendents of Abraham and Isaac lived among the peoples who were there before them. It is in the narratives of the Israelites returning from Egypt that they became invaders and conquerors, claiming the whole of the land in God's name. Being descendants of a stranger is perhaps a deeply buried and anxiety-laden part of Israel's common consciousness.
Still, a great many texts mention the stranger who has to be cared for in God's name. Deuteronomy 5:14 speaks of "the stranger within your gates". In Deuteronomy 24:17, for instance, the rights of the stranger are protected, just like those of widows. The Israelites are reminded, for instance, in Leviticus 19:33-34, of their own deprivations during their exile in Egypt. In other words, in the name of JHWH it is considered wrong to deny strangers a place to live because the Israelites are entitled to compensation for their suffering in Egypt, and during the Holocaust. In fact, according to the texts, the fact that they themselves have suffered must be the source of their compassion for others.
In many texts, "all peoples", all the humanity of this whole earth, are objects of JHWH's attention, love and redemption. A striking example is the prophesy in Isaiah 25:6: "And on this mountain shall JHWH of the armies make unto all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of old wines, of fat foods full of marrow, of fine, long stored wines ."
Which image of God, with which biblical roots, could work in a positive way in the many conflicts about territories we see in our world? Hagar's faith-experience of God, El Roi, the God of seeing, the God of seeing the stranger, could well be the key to opening a way of thinking about God that can make little openings in the walls that defend our territories. The first and most important thing in relationships is to see the other. Josselyn (1996) stresses the need for eye-to-eye contact as the first step of a meaningful relationship across boundaries, as is argued earlier in this article. The act of seeing the other appeals to us in the embodied humanity of the other, perhaps threatening, yes, but also vulnerable. As long as the other is understood as fully human, there is still hope that this appeal might work: we can identify with the other, imagine her/his pain and frustration. If the walls are so high that this seeing is made impossible, as is the case with the walls erected by Israel on Palestinian land, there is hardly any hope left. If visible or invisible walls are erected and strangers are gathered in and restricted to ghettoes, Homelands, places they can hardly leave, there is not much hope for sharing a place in peace and justice.
The sharing of a territory - which is always physical, but also socio-cultural - is no small thing; it needs a person to change her/his identity. In my country, for instance, Dutch people are no longer per definition white and (more or less) Christian. I have to reconsider my own identity.
The opening of gates to let the other in, hospitality, is an important virtue in the value systems of many cultures and religions, including Judaism, Islam and Christianity. On the basis of the acknowledgement that the other can feature in a positive way in one's founding myth and no longer needs to be seen only as the threatening other, the other can be let into one's territory, one's home, one's country. Hospitality encompasses more than tolerance. Hospitality is the practice of "loving one's neighbour". Hospitality is associated with seeing the needs of one's neighbour and fulfilling them. Hospitality is generosity (see Bretherton 2006:98). The need for a territory of one's own remains important, but, bearing in mind Josselyn's argument, as mentioned earlier, one can try to establish "a we". However, a guest is not supposed to stay too long and she/he is expected to adapt her/his ways to the ways of her/his host. Often the term "hospitality" does not cover the whole process of becoming co-inhabitants of a territory. In many places on earth, the problem is who is the guest and who is the host? Who has to adapt her/his ways to whom? Who is the main possessor of a territory? Who has the power to make the rules and, if it is deemed necessary, to expel the other? Who controls the means to survive in a place?
The question is whether the most important myths of competing groups make it imaginable to share a place with mutual respect. To continue the example of the conflict between Jews and Palestinians - some Biblical texts (as mentioned above) and texts in the Koran make it possible to imagine this. The Koran, Sura 49:13, says: "O mankind, We have created you of male and female, and have made you peoples and tribes, that you may become to know one another." Safa' Abu Assab, a Muslim scholar, took this text (in an unpublished lecture during the seminar about Sarah and Hagar, Jerusalem, 22 June 2006) as an opening for peace talks among Muslims, Jews and Christians. According to her, it is evident that it is most important for Allah that different people, as different from each other as male and female are, respect each other and see each other as co-human. If that is the case, as Mercedes Navarro argued, a liminal space can be imagined and used as a space for negotiations. In these negotiations, it "is vital that one has a hermeneutic of one's traditions that allows, at least sometimes, for both sides of a conflict to be wrong and right simultaneously. Only in this way can two rights coexist in different worldviews" (Gopin 2002:109, Gopin's emphasis). In other words, the partners in the negotiations make their leading narratives conscious and tell them to each other. In doing this, they look for overlap in their different myths of entitlement. Is it possible that an ideology is (partly) shared? Is it possible that the narratives and myths of the religion of the other can be listened to with patience and respect? Do both parties acknowledge each other's basic human rights? Do they acknowledge each other's wounds, inflicted during the course of history, and the pain causing what is perhaps an excessive need for security? Is it possible to forgive? Do they see the other as a human being and as such passionately longing for a territory of her/his own, for a grounded identity and self-esteem?
A (partly) shared narrative or myth is the basis for learning to live together in everyday life and for sharing a place in practice. Luke Bretherton, writing about the possibility of finding a salvific way to live and act as a community in today's increasing ethical plurality, recommends three steps on the path to living together as communities with different ethical systems, different systems of responsibilities, entitlements and accountabilities.
The first step is to focus on the local community where people actually have to live together. It is there that a possibility to see each other as human beings is the greatest. A "condition sine qua non" is that the different groups in the local community see the pain that conflicts inflict on both parties. They have to become conscious of the need to live together in peace. The second step is a "simultaneous renewal of emphasis on demonstrations of particular conceptions of the common good in practice". The third is "an engagement with the politics of local community, wherein the reform of practices and institutions can take place through rational debate between rival communities of resistance" (Bretherton 2006:99).
Taking these three steps may require a long time, but they are worth the effort. They always have to be taken by both parties, together, slowly, letting ideas ripen and old prejudices die. It is a way of making half-conscious religious myths and ideologies conscious, learning about the religion and ideologies, the history and the identity of the other, looking for interfaces or points of contact. And, perhaps, in time, the twain will meet in a shared place.
Works consulted
Bakker, C B & Bakker-Rabdau, M K 1973. Verboden toegang: Verkenning rond het menselijk territorium. Antwerpen: De Nederlandse Boekhandel. [ Links ]
Bons-Storm, R 2007. Gezegend leven: Op weg naar een pastorale gemeente in een verbrokkelde wereld. Gorinchem: Narratio. [ Links ]
Bretherton, L 2006. Hospitality as holiness: Christian witness amid moral diversity. Aldershot: Ashgate. [ Links ]
Brueggemann, W 1978. The Land: Place as gift, promise and challenge in biblical faith. London: SPCK. [ Links ]
Gerstenberger, E S 2002. Theologies in the Old Testament. London: T & T Clark. [ Links ]
Gopin, M 2002. Holy war, holy peace: How religion can bring peace to the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [ Links ]
Inge, J 2003. A Christian theology of place. Aldershot: Ashgate. [ Links ]
Josselson, R 1996. The space between us: Exploring the dimensions of human relations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. [ Links ]
Korzak, M P 1992. At the start Genesis made new. European Series, Louvain Cahiers, 124. [ Links ]
Morgan, S 1987. My place. South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press. [ Links ]
Navarro, M 2003. Women and religions: Visibility and invisibility in society in Southern Europe. Unpublished lecture, given at the European Women Synod in Barcelona. [ Links ]
Oz, A 2004. Hoe genees je een fanaticus? Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij. [ Links ]
* Prof Dr Riet Bons-Storm is Emeritus-Professor at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) and a member of the International Advisory Board of HTS Theological Studies. She is a research associate of Prof Dr Yolanda Dreyer, Department of Practical Theology, University of Pretoria.


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Jan 14, 2003 | ISBN 9781400031184
"Another exemplary product of Rendell's fertile imagination. Delivers what mystery lovers want. Above all, fascination." –The Washington Post Book World
"Rendell builds plots the way the Romans built bridges, erecting graceful, arching affairs that soar high because they are sunk deep and cost a human life or two." –The New York Times Book Review
"A neat little microcosm of the Rendell universe, in which innocence and experience, the macabre and playful, the sadistic and romantic, all rub shoulders . . . before erupting into a kind of spontaneously lethal combustion." –The Boston Globe
"Disquieting, compelling . . . Rendell is a literary Hitchcock, coming at stories from unexpected angles." –Chicago Tribune
"Rendell terrorizes with the subtle authority of a cat burglar in the night." –San Francisco Chronicle
"Whether she's writing as herself or under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, Rendell is never boring. Adam and Eve is no exception." –USA Today
"A true page-turner, with a haunting ending that stayed with me long after I had read the final sentences." –St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Rendell's genius is to create characters so vivid they live beyond the frame of the novel. She pushes the ordinary to the point of the bizarre while remaining consistently believable." –Publishers Weekly
"Rendell writes with such elegance and restraint, with such a literate voice and an insightful mind, that she transcends the mystery genre and achieves something almost sublime." –Los Angeles Times
"Madly absorbing . . . Rendell's characters are fully drawn, and we become completely caught up in their struggles." –Booklist
"Ruth Rendell is, unequivocally, the most brilliant mystery novelist of our times." –Patricia Cornwell


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The very popular Moto GP machine has been truly shrunk down to a 1:18 scale model that will fit in the palm of your hand. The YAMAHA YZR-M1 is now under your control, ready to battle with your friends on Mini-Z size race tracks. Looking at the constant demands for the 1/8 scale Hanging On Racer, there are for sure not a few enthusiasts of R/C motorcycles all over the world. However, it is true that it was not easy for R/C beginners to get used to driving an R/C motorcycle because a two-wheel vehicle is naturally unstable at the low speed range. The MINI-Z Moto Racer has adopted sophisticated technologies to overcome this problem and has lowered the hurdle while maintaining the fun of control. Anybody can now jump into this genre and feel the fun of two-wheel vehicle driving.
The first hobby grade R/C Micro Motorcycle at this size! The innovative E-gyro system equipped within the rear wheel keeps the bike going straight even running at a super slow speed while realizing quick leaning action at a high speed. With the digital proportional system for steering and throttle, you can control the bike as if you are riding on it! No special technique is required to drive it, if you are an experienced R/C car driver, you'll only need a short period of practice to get used to it. Even if the bike falls down, no worries, the support bars hold the bike at a certain angle and help restart running when some throttle is applied. Equipped with a high power coreless drive motor, lightweight 3.7V 120mAh LiPo battery, and ten ball bearings the bike accelerates up to 20km/h without stress and realizes up to 10-minute runtime. Thanks to the E-gyro system, the Mini-Z Moto Racer can run virtually on any on-road surfaces such as needle punched carpets, urethane tracks, tiles, and smoothly paved asphalt.
Ready Set Contents:
Required For Operation:
· 4 AAA Batteries
Technical Data:
0 items


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Meet Nashville Songwriter Courtney Jaye
This on-the-verge musician proves that old-school songwriting is alive and well in Nashville.
Until free-spirited Courtney Jaye landed in Nashville, she'd been snakebit with a long-running case of wanderlust—perhaps the biggest reason her 2010 album struck such an original chord in Music City. The Exotic Sounds of Courtney Jaye features 11 tracks fearlessly pulled from a road-worn collection of sounds: lap steel guitar, ukulele, recorded birdcalls, and her you-listen-to-me-mister surety of voice. You might call her tunes Patsy Cline meets Hawaiian luau, since Courtney played beach bars in Kauai for a blissful stretch several years back.
Listen to Our Favorite Songs
- "I Need Love" from The Exotic Sounds of Courtney Jaye—Listen Now
- "Sweet Ride" from The Exotic Sounds of Courtney Jaye
- "Box Wine" from The Exotic Sounds of Courtney Jaye
- "Don't Tell A Girl" from The Exotic Sounds of Courtney Jaye
- Listen to all on iTunes
Her Nashville Heroes:
"Skeeter Davis, Rosanne Cash, and Loretta Lynn are all strong women that never really played by the rules of Music Row and still have epic careers."
Wishes She Had Written:
Adele's new single "Rolling in the Deep," cowritten with her producer Paul Epworth. "I've read that her new album was inspired by classic country."
Next Up:
Her follow-up record Love and Forgiveness with Miranda Lambert's 2010 CMA Album of the Year-winning producer Mike Wrucke.


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It's official
TORONTO — I don't know if they accidentally examined Troy Glaus' shoulder and Scott Rolen's foot, but the pair of third basemen have passed their respective medical exams and are switching cities.
Monday night, the Blue Jays and Cardinals officially announced that the trade that's sending Glaus to St. Louis and Rolen to Toronto was complete. Now, time will tell whether or not Glaus (left foot surgery in Sept.) and Rolen (left shoulder surgery in Sept.) can bounce back from their injuries and be the All-Stars they once were.
The Jays are flying Rolen to Toronto for a press conference on Tuesday. Once we're all done interviewing him, us Toronto scribes can swarm GM J.P. Ricciardi and get back to backup catcher watch. I'll be bringing play-by-play manana. Later all.
UPDATE: Tuesday, 9:44 p.m. — Coverage of the Scott Rolen presser should be on MLB.com before too long. I'll blog some of the stuff I didn't include in the story later on. For now, I need to hit the gym. In short, Rolen seems like a great guy, had the rooming in stitches at some points, and Ricciardi said the club has a few minor things still in the works to upgrade the bench. More to come…
13 Comments
Now that all the specultation is over. It time to start speculating about the next unexpected move in the Jays "quiet" off season.
Will Rios get traded for more pitching? Can J.P. Swing a deal for Eric Bedard? Will a team make a worth while offer for A.J. Burnett when the Santana Sweepstakes are over?
It's been a really fun offseason….
The Rollen trade makes signing Eckstein look really, really good. Jordan, you will have to ask JP if he planned it that way.
If this has talking since the Winter Meetings, the Eckstein signing makes even more sense now.
It clearly hasn't been going on that long. St. Louis was trying to work out a deal with Milwaukee until just recently. So this deal really only started a week to maybe two weeks ago.
The interesting question, I hope someone asks JP today is who made the first call JP or St. Louis?
If you'd like to view the Scot Rolen press conference live at 5.45PM EST today, go to the following url:
I've been wondering the same thing. It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things but i'm really curious about it. If you read this soon J.p. will be interviewed on the fan after 3:20 I believe. Also thanks for the link.
Something else (nearly) official: Josh Towers is heading to Colorado. Not breaking news, surely, but nice to see him in the mix for a starting job with a World Series team.
missed the fan interview. Also the link I published takes you to the front page of the Jays web site where the interview is carried. I didn't realize that at the time I made the last post since at that time the link wasn't on the site.
I saw him with Barry Davis of sportsnet. He seems ligitimately excited about coming to Toronto.
Does anybody know how similar or different Rolen's and Wells' shoulder injuries are ? Considering that Rolen needed 3 surguries I am beginning to wonder if Wells will have a similar outcome?
Totally different. Rolen hurt his shoulder in a collision with the Dodgers' Hee-Seop Choi and had two major surgeries on it. This last one was microscopic surgery cleaning up scar tissue to allow fullmovement.
Wells had a slight tear-I believe, and a cyst, so they are different problems.
In the Rolen interview, it certainly sounded to me that he was happy with the results of this last surgery.
Watching the press interview, I felt Rolen was indeed happy to be here and start over. I also got the feeling he's healthy and ready to go opening day.
The guy is really intense and doesn't know neutral or reverse,only high gear and full throttle each time he plays. I now understand what one writer meant when he said Rolen had a burning desire to win. You can feel that in his words and body language.
I'm sure he'll be one of the guys and joke and laugh right along with everyone else, but when the bell rings, Rolen puts his game face on and gives 150% from the time the game starts until it ends. This could be what cost him in the past, because I'd bet if another player is dogging it, Rolen will straighten him out right away.
If he was here when the Hillebrand sitation happened, it wouldn't be Gibbons threatening to fight Hillebrand; Rolen would have already pounded him into submission.
I'm interested in other's thoughts and Jordan's response, being in the room, but I for one think we're lucky to get him and Scot Rolen is exactly the guy we need to contend.
Rolen played 7 seasons in Philly before he was traded, and 5 in St Louis, so if we can get 3 years out of him before he gets mad at Gibby, that's OK.
His hitting stats for last year are a bit spotty, because he didn't have his best year at the plate, but from what I can see, he hit better with runners on 2nd and 3rd, and he hit .400 with the bases loaded. He's a guy that wants to get to the plate when the game is on the line. We know he doesn't like to sit and watch.
He has a really nice swing. Keeps his hands in, gets behind the ball, and keeps his legs under him. I can't find a hitting chart, but it looks like he can use the whole field. There is definitely some power there when he squares it up.


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Distinctive Dream Escapes
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A cruise is a wonderful way to introduce yourself to a new destination: port cities are often historic and vibrant centers of culture and commerce, ensuring a lively on-shore experience. However, they can also be gateways to interesting places and lovely sights that lie inland. It's possible to enjoy both the ports and what lies beyond them when you take a cruisetour.
A cruisetour combines a cruise with a multi-night land tour that goes further than a shore excursion can. Cruisetours combine the ease of a cruise with the opportunity to more fully immerse yourself in the culture of the place you're visiting.
For example, Australia is just emerging as a cruisetour destination. In addition to exploring the welcoming port cities of Australia – such as Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane – you can venture into the famous Australian Outback. There, you can see exotic wildlife (think kangaroos, dingoes and blue-tongued lizards); experience the majestic beauty of Uluru (Ayers Rock), the Olgas and Kings Canyon; and learn about Aboriginal heritage and culture at Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory.
Alaska is an established and popular destination for cruisetours; like Australia, it has a vast and beautiful interior. For example, a tour of Denali National Park is a perfect complement to a cruise of historic port towns like Ketchikan, Skagway and Sitka. In addition to majestic Mt. McKinley, Denali features grizzly bears, caribou, Dall sheep, lynx and other wildlife. Other cruisetour destinations in Alaska's interior include Talkeetna, a historic village at the base of Mt. McKinley that offers great fishing and float trips; lodges along the Iditarod trail; and mountainous Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Or, cross the Canadian border to explore the gold fields of the Yukon.
Europe offers a terrific variety of cruisetour possibilities: port cities provide a taste of local culture, but a cruisetour will let you take a bigger bite. For example, a cruise of the British Isles can be enhanced by a land tour of the Ring of Kerry, a wonderfully scenic route through southwestern Ireland's County Kerry. An Italian cruisetour can take you to ports like Genoa, Naples and Venice without missing the inland wonders of Milan and Florence. Before or after you sail on a ship that home ports in Barcelona, you could explore inland cities stretching from Madrid, Spain, to Avignon, France.
To find out more about the many options for memorable cruisetours, talk with your Cruise Holidays personal cruise expert.


text:
The sounds we hear are the result of vibrations of air, fluid, and
solid materials in our environment. The vibrations produce sound waves, which
vibrate at a certain speed (frequency) and have a certain height (amplitude).
The vibration speed of a sound wave determines how high or low a sound is
(pitch). The height of the sound wave determines how loud the sound is
Hearing is the result of these sound waves traveling through the ear
and being converted into nerve impulses that are sent to the brain, which
"hears" them.
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text:
Posted by R. Berg on December 14, 2004
In Reply to: [word removed in order to comply with Google's Publisher Policy] amd selective acceptability posted by ESC on December 13, 2004
: : British TV is presently screening a documentary about 'Big Ron' Atkinson - the guy who described Marcel Dessailly as a "fkg thick lazy [word removed in order to comply with Google's Publisher Policy]" - so they took him to the USA to discuss the word. The discussion included whether '[word removed in order to comply with Google's Publisher Policy]' could be acceptably used by whites. Can anybody think of any examples of whether there are other words or phrases that only some people are allowed to use?
: : I like words, but I don't like that word and would not use it in anything other than sensible discussion or v. carefully in very heavy irony. However, I find it strange that ANY words are banned from a whole group. what do other people think?
: In the United States, I can't think of any instance where a white person could use the [word removed in order to comply with Google's Publisher Policy]. Ever, ever, ever. Not even in jest to a close friend.
I can. White people who are enlightened, for want of a better word, use the word when reporting what someone else said or when discussing language. Other white people just use it. I recently read a post on a message board where a woman reported that she'd moved into a neighborhood where some residents routinely called black people n*****s. She isn't white, though; she's American Indian. Her neighbors might be surprised to learn that the word is taboo in their ethnic group.


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Federal Courts cite Prof. Cassel on corporate human rights responsibilities
In its July 2011 ruling in Flomo v. Firestone Natural Rubber Company,i the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit cites a law review article by Notre Dame Law Professor Doug Cassel, Director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights, arguing that corporations involved in human rights violations overseas can be sued for money damages under the Alien Tort Claims Act ("ATCA").ii
The Seventh Circuit decision is the latest salvo in an ongoing judicial debate, one which may soon reach the U.S. Supreme Court. The Seventh Circuit panel reaches an opposite conclusion from last year's holding by a Second Circuit panel,iii in which Cassel's article was cited by a concurring judge.iv On the other hand, the Seventh Circuit view is consistent with an earlier federal district court ruling, which also relied in part on Cassel's article.v
The article is Corporate Aiding and Abetting of Human Rights Violations: Confusion in the Courts, 6 NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS 304 (2008). Among other contentions, Cassel argues that, merely because corporations cannot generally be criminally prosecuted under international law, this does not mean that they cannot be sued civilly for money damages.
The Seventh Circuit opinion was authored by Judge Richard Posner and joined by Judges William Bauer and Daniel Manion. It finds jurisdiction under ATCA to sue corporations for human rights violations, at least where "the violations are directed, encouraged, or condoned at the corporate defendant's decisionmaking level."
The opinion cites Cassel's argument that distinguishes criminal from civil liability under international law. Cassel argues that "current international criminal law does not generally impose international criminal responsibility on corporations. But the principal reason, …, is not a peculiar reluctance to hold corporations criminally accountable for violating international norms. Rather the main reason is that the domestic legal systems of many States do not provide for criminal responsibility of [corporations] for violating any law."
Cassel continues: "There is no comparable problem, however, in holding corporations civilly accountable to pay money damages for violations of norms. I am not aware of any legal system in which corporations cannot be sued for damages when they commit legal wrongs that would be actionable if committed by an individual." vi
Despite its general holding on corporate liability, the Seventh Circuit declined to find Firestone liable for alleged child labor on its rubber plantation in Liberia. The company does not directly employ children, but imposes stringent production quotas on its adult employees. According to the plaintiffs, the quotas lead the adults to recruit their young children to help them in the fields. On these particular facts, the Court ruled that Firestone does not violate customary international law against child labor.
The earlier, contrary Second Circuit ruling involved allegations that Royal Dutch Petroleum is liable under ATCA for aiding and abetting Nigerian soldiers to commit murder, rape, and other acts of violence against a civilian population. By a 2-1 decision, the Court ruled that, because international law norms applied under ATCA derive from international criminal law, and international criminal law does not generally expose corporations to prosecution, there can be no civil liability for corporations under ATCA.vii Judge Leval, concurring in the judgment only, dissented on this point, citing Cassel's article for the argument quoted above. viii
The first case to rely on Cassel's article was the 2009 District Court decision in which various corporations are alleged to have been accomplices to South African apartheid.ix
Whether corporations may be sued under the Act could be decided by the Supreme Court as early as next term. On June 6, 2011, plaintiffs in the Nigerian case petitioned for a writ of certiorari. Facing a split between the Second and Seventh Circuits (among others), the Supreme Court will have grounds which could lead it to take the case.
In an era when courts are ever more reluctant to rely on academic writing, Notre Dame's Center for Civil and Human Rights continues to combine scholarship with cutting edge issues of human rights practice.
i 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 14179, at 15 (July 11, 2011). ii 28 U.S.C. section 1350. The Act provides in full: ""The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."
iii Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., 621 F.3d 111 (2d Cir. 2010), rehearing en banc denied, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 27003, rehearing denied, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 2200, cert. filed, June 6, 2011.
iv Id., 621 F. 3d at 149, 160, 176 n. 22 (Judge Leval, concurring only in the judgment).
v In re South African Apartheid Litigation, 617 F. Supp. 2d 228, 260 (S.D.N.Y. 2009).
vi 6 NW. U. J.INT'L HUM.RTS. 304, 322.
vii Kiobel, note ii supra, at 120.
viii 621 F. 3d at 149, 160, 176 n. 22
ix In re South African Apartheid Litigation, 617 F. Supp. 2d 228, 260 (S.D.N.Y. 2009).