#Indian conglomerates

[signode-blog]

Reliance Industries: Pioneering Innovation, Driving Growth, Shaping the Future

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) stands as a beacon of industrial might and innovation, not just within the confines of India but on the global stage. Founded by Dhirubhai Ambani in the 1960s, it has metamorphosed from a modest textile manufacturer into a behemoth straddling various sectors, including petrochemicals, refining, oil and gas exploration, retail, telecommunications, and digital…

[bestoneindia]

Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit and innovative and bold ideas, Bestone Industries Pvt. Ltd. is a conglomerate company with multiple product portfolios. It has been emerging as the number #1 company offering high-quality beverages to the domestic market. We have a wide range of products including packaged drinking water and alcoholic beverage under the brand name Rokky Whiskey.

[q-kanbas]

Wow the Discourse has become so rank on here that people openly admitting they ignore your ethnic bg is seen as. progressive, somehow?

[15-lizards]

so this must be a weird request, but i was thinking about myriah martell (daeron ii's wife) and her relationship with the targaryen court. i figured that, as naerys wasn't such a strong figure at court nor the most fashionable, during aegon iv's rule myriah would be the closest to a fashion icon/inspiration for daeron's faction, however, as a martell in a deeply anti-dorne with a racist father-by-law/king, her influence would probably be quite limited at the time of his reign, both in fashion and in politics. hopefully, if martin doesn't kill her in f&b2, how do you think her queenship would influence the fashion in court? if you have any ideas of how as princess of dragonstone she and her supporters would dress, i'd love to hear about them too! (sorry for the bad english, i am brazilian and am writing this at 3am during research for fanfic, so it's not my most cohesive moment)

I am so sorry this is so late dear I just noticed this while I’m clearing out my ask box

Okay side note so I’ve never been able to decide on one main inspiration for Dorne, and I really don’t want that to read as orientalist conglomeration of multiple middle eastern cultures. I just can’t decide which real-world culture works the best, so please let me know if anything I say comes off as orientalist bc I really don’t want to do that!

Okay all that being said: I feel like Pakistani and Indian fashions are the biggest inspos for this time period in particular. Unfortunately we don’t know much about Myriah’s personality, but she seemed to mesh well with Daeron, so I take that as her being a more moderate, calm personality. Dressing in clothes that were fitting for her station as a princess of Dorne with gold stitched silks etc. but still have some degree of modesty at the same time. Her and her ladies always wore a few layers over their gowns, and always had some sort of shawl or scarf with them. Despite their compliance to the standards of Kings Landing, Dornish fashions never caught on completely, though over the years the Dornish fashion began to change a bit, with fuller skirts and more fitted bodices, while the prominent women of the city began to wear layered gowns and have the edges of their clothing embroidered in gold

[fatehbaz]

In 1678, a Chaldean priest from Baghdad reached the Imperial Villa of Potosí, the world’s richest silver-mining camp and at the time the world’s highest city at more than 4,000 metres (13,100 feet) above sea level. A regional capital in the heart of the Bolivian Andes, Potosí remains – more than three and a half centuries later – a mining city today. [...] The great red Cerro Rico or ‘Rich Hill’ towered over the city of Potosí. It had been mined since 1545 [...]. When Don Elias arrived [...], the great boom of 1575-1635 – when Potosí alone produced nearly half the world’s silver – was over, but the mines were still yielding the precious metal. [...]

On Potosí’s main market plaza, indigenous and African women served up maize beer, hot soup and yerba mate. Shops displayed the world’s finest silk and linen fabrics, Chinese porcelain, Venetian glassware, Russian leather goods, Japanese lacquerware, Flemish paintings and bestselling books in a dozen languages. [...]

Pious or otherwise, wealthy women clicked Potosí’s cobbled streets in silver-heeled platform shoes, their gold earrings, chokers and bracelets studded with Indian diamonds and Burmese rubies. Colombian emeralds and Caribbean pearls were almost too common. Peninsular Spanish ‘foodies’ could savour imported almonds, capers, olives, arborio rice, saffron, and sweet and dry Castilian wines. Black pepper arrived from Sumatra and southwest India, cinnamon from Sri Lanka, cloves from Maluku and nutmeg from the Banda Islands. Jamaica provided allspice. Overloaded galleons spent months transporting these luxuries across the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans. Plodding mule and llama trains carried them up to the lofty Imperial Villa.

---

Potosi supplied the world with silver, the lifeblood of trade and sinews of war [...]. In turn, the city consumed the world’s top commodities and manufactures. [...] The city’s dozen-plus notaries worked non-stop inventorying silver bars and sacks of pesos [...]. Mule trains returning from the Pacific brought merchandise and mercury, the essential ingredient for silver refining. [...] From Buenos Aires came slavers with captive Africans from Congo and Angola, transshipped via Rio de Janeiro. Many of the enslaved were children branded with marks mirroring those, including the royal crown, inscribed on silver bars.

Soon after its 1545 discovery, Potosí gained world renown [...]. Mexico’s many mining camps [...] peaked only after 1690. [...] Even in the Andes of South America there were other silver cities [...]. But no silver deposit in the world matched the Cerro Rico, and no other mining-refining conglomeration grew so large. Potosí was unique: a mining metropolis.

Thus Don Elias, like others, made the pilgrimage to the silver mountain. It was a divine prodigy, a hierophany. In 1580, Ottoman artists depicted Potosí as a slice of earthly paradise, the Cerro Rico lush and green, the city surrounded by crenellated walls. Potosí, as Don Quixote proclaimed, was the stuff of dreams. Another alms seeker, in 1600, declared the Cerro Rico the Eighth Wonder of the World. A [...] visitor in 1615 gushed: ‘Thanks to its mines, Castile is Castile, Rome is Rome, the pope is the pope, and the king is monarch of the world.’ [...]

---

For all its glory, Potosí was also the stuff of nightmares [...].

Almost a century before Don Elias visited Potosí, Viceroy Francisco de Toledo revolutionised world silver production. Toledo was a hard-driving bureaucrat of the Spanish empire [...]. Toledo reached Potosí in 1572, anxious to flip it into the empire’s motor of commerce and war. By 1575, the viceroy had organised a sweeping labour draft, launched a ‘high-tech’ mill-building campaign, and overseen construction of a web of dams and canals to supply the Imperial Villa with year-round hydraulic power, all in the high Andes at the nadir of the Little Ice Age. Toledo also oversaw construction of the Potosí mint, staffed full-time with enslaved Africans. [...] Toledo’s successes came with a steep price. Thanks to the viceroy’s ‘reforms’, hundreds of thousands of Andeans became virtual refugees (those who survived) and, in the search for timber and fuel, colonists denuded hundreds of miles of fragile, high-altitude land. [...] The city’s smelteries belched lead and zinc-rich smoke [...].

The Habsburg kings of Spain cared little about Potosí’s social and environmental horrors. [...] For more than a century, the Cerro Rico fuelled the world’s first global military-industrial complex, granting Spain the means to prosecute decades-long wars on a dozen fronts – on land and at sea. No one else could do all this and still afford to lose. [...]

By [...] 1909 [...], mineral rushes had helped to produce cities such as San Francisco and Johannesburg, but nothing quite compared for sheer audacity with the Imperial Villa of Potosí, a neo-medieval mining metropolis perched in the Andes of South America.

---

Text by: Kris Lane. “Potosi: the mountain of silver that was the first global city.” Aeon. 30 July 2019. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[kaladinkholins]

i love being southeast asian.

despite whatever unhappy history, despite the rise of ethnonationalism and racism in our countries; despite the fact that most of us remain in the global south under the invisible thumb of western empires and conglomerates, exploited by rich expats and beg-packers; despite the conservatism, the bigotry, the pain and prejudice and the corruption.

despite all that, i love where i am from. this is my home.

my hands tenderly trace the lines of our history and find within it a colourful collection of influences that continue to shape us until today:

the native malays, javanese, sundanese, minangkabau, bugis, visayan, tagalog, and other dominant peoples.

alongside indigenous tribes like the iban, kadazan, sama-bajau, temuan, penan, jakun, and hundreds upon hundreds more ethnic groups.

all of us holding onto our ancestors' mysticism and spirituality and animism, the watchful gaze of legacy fixed on us as we move through an ever-changing and modernising world (and what is modernity anyway? isn't civilisation overrated?).

and then the chinese peoples. the hainanese, hokkien and cantonese and more, many of whom came here due to trade in the pre-colonial era, but then most arrived as the imported labour for the colonial powers.

but this is their home too. we live here together, and through them we all celebrate lunar new year and the mid-autumn festival. all of us give red envelopes during our many festivals. we give oranges that symbolise prosperity and ring in the year of the rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat. we hold lion dance performances in our malls and marks. we eat and exchange mooncakes.

and then the indian peoples, though mostly tamil indians from south india, but also sikhs, malayalis, and punjabis, who arrived and assimilated and spread their culture and beliefs much earlier before the pre-colonial era, causing the indianisation of southeast asia. then more indian peoples came during the colonial era, again, as imported labour, working our fields or donning the uniform of our common oppressors, kept walled away from us despite how alike we look and sound.

because truly we do sound the same. sanskrit remains an abundant source for a large chunk of our languages. i hear the vedic mantras and can pick apart words that sound familiar. hinduism and buddhism still leaves its traces in our cultures even for those of us who've shifted to islam.

and yes, islam. we're not what the west thinks of when they talk about the muslim world, but southeast asia has some of the largest muslim populations in the world. because through trade, since the medieval times, islam came here and with it brought so many arabic influences that has come to shape our languages and customs, with plenty of our cultures having since been morphed around islamic beliefs and ideas. in malaysia and indonesia and brunei (and perhaps even certain parts of the philippines) you'll find a mosque or a prayer room everywhere you go. and every ramadan millions of us fast, every eid all of us dress up and visit each other's houses for feasts and festivities.

then of course came european colonisation at the hands of the portugese, dutch, british (in malaysia and indonesia's case we got all three), spanish, and french their reigns lasting over 400 years. and from them we came european culture and more new languages, english quickly becoming a second language (or even a first language) for so many of us, missionaries building churches and spreading the word of jesus christ as the son of god; with their fair features they draw a line between us and them, between the civilised and the barbarians, between the light-haired light-eyed and the unruly dark-haired dark-eyed.

and then comes world war 2 and the japanese invasion, and for most it was so brutal and violent, and for the rest it was miserable, with famine and inflation but we were forced to sing songs in japanese anyway, to watch their planes fly in the sky towards their enemies, to swallow their ideas in our parched throats.

and then the war ended and wounds began to heal, and then came the 1980s until now with all its shiny technology: nintendo, panasonic, television and anime, and now we have leagues of people learning japanese language and culture anyway, except now it is done wholeheartedly, and as it turns out japanese isn't even that different from our own cultures anyway. houses on stilts made of wood with thatch roofs, making our living from the sea and coast, eating rice for every meal, our phonetics and theirs so alike.

and today we have waves of their expats migrating here because of course they do, we're the Global South™ and for them it's cheap and affordable, so we have little japans sprouting here and there and sometimes i go to a random street and find signs written in japanese and read bits of broken hiragana.

and it's beautiful, being able to move through this world and find the handprints we've all left upon it. it's a wonderful amalgam of so many traditions and colours and beliefs and language all mixing around in this huge bubbling melting pot.

and i'm not chinese or indian or arab or british but when i see them on tv, i'm also seeing a part of me, i hear the words in their tongue and i recognise them as mine, i eat their food and know them as intimately as my own.

but of course our politicians, our kings and our prime ministers (and the divide-and-conquer rule of colonisers now gone) continue to divide us and make us hate each other, fanning flames of distrust and fear of that-which-is-different.

it's such a shame too, because it's so special. it's what makes us us, our dozens of creoles, the way we can speak a sentence comprising vernacular from at least four languages and we all understand each other anyway.

we have a word in malay, "rojak", which is also the name of a dish that mixes a bunch of different ingredients, and is found in malaysian, indonesian and singaporean cuisine. but where i'm from, we also say "rojak" to mean anything that's an eclectic mixture of things, things that seemingly don't go together and aren't necessarily pleasing to the eye but still, somehow, it works, in fact it tastes good, spicy and flavourful and hearty.

and that's us: southeast asia, all of it, a beautiful rojak culture. and it's ours.

[leam1983]

Skull and Bones - Misnomers

I kind of tuned out of Ubisoft's "quadruple-A" bloatfest the moment I realized that the scenario was hellbent on taking its analogy between the 1750s' trading companies in the Indian Ocean and modern megacorporations to the stupidest of all next levels imaginable.

See, the game performs one tiny historical travesty that I'd normally forgive, except every kid and their mother grows up learning that what helped to develop the Americas was a group of monopolies referred to as trading companies - not megacorps.

Megacorps are a new concept, historically speaking. I've also seen people confuse them with trusts, but they don't quite fit. Trusts are essentially company-centric unions, if I had to bastardise a concept, focused and designed to promote the companies operating a particular market and to serve their interests. They weren't monolithic. A trading company was a single entity, with the root of the misuse of the term "megacorporation" lying in the fact that trading companies had many similar concepts. Trading companies fostered their own company culture and identity, they had their own standing fleets and included ships designed in order to protect the trade assets sailing across the Indian Ocean and Caribbean.

Megacorporations, on the other hand, are conglomerates by necessity. They're symbiotic massings of smaller companies, granted some rights typically reserved for individuals out of the notion that what hurts the gestalt hurts the worker. There's reams of Leftist and Social-Democratic theory out there that proves this assertion is a crock of shit and hurts most workers. As we currently stand, megacorps do not yet have standing armies - thank God - and are yet to replace legislative bodies. Considering, the analogy Skull and Bones tries to make is incomplete, poorly expressed and misleading.

Pirates weren't Punk. Dig a little and you realize most of 'em wheeled and dealed with impunity, going from Corsair to Pirate and back and forth all depending on who paid the most.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

my favorite pic of HH so far!  :: [thanks RigDzin Dharma Foundation ]

* * * * *

A Mongolian boy born in the US has been named as the reincarnation of the third most important spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism by the Dalai Lama. The faith’s spiritual leader has been pictured with the eight-year-old boy taking part in a ceremony in Dharamshala in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh – where the Dalai Lama, 87, lives in exile – recognising him as the 10th Khalkha Jetsun Dhampa Rinpoche, according to The Times. Mongolian media reports suggest the child is one of a pair of twin boys named Aguidai and Achiltai Altannar, sons of Altannar Chinchuluun and Monkhnasan Narmandakh, a university mathematics professor and a national resources conglomerate executive, respectively.

[Independent UK]

[da-ambivertartist]

Valerian Singh Pavaki 💋

"Salutations, cuties! It's your favorite LA Diva, Vivi! Welcome to the channel! I have a lot in my back pocket for today so strap yourselves in, sip that tea for me, and let me scrub away those worries for you! wink~" -Valerian

Pronouns & Gender: Any & Gender-fluid BDay: June 25th (Leo) Ethnicity: Black/Indian/Afghan Weight & Height: 5'8 and 168 lbs Age: 24

Valerian - self-proclaimed LA's Sexiest Diva - is someone who hides their insecurity and sensitivity behind their flamboyance and egotistical ways. They enjoy being in charge, but when their way of things isn't ideal, they get upset regardless of whether it is right or not. Besides this, they're generous, and caring to friends and even business partners who could be their competitors or don't understand their vision.

Although her life seems to be going at an all-time high, Valerian's trauma is a debilitating factor that gets in the way of her passions. Valerian's father wasn't supportive of her lifestyle, so Valerian and her mother had to move overseas and escape the scrutiny. After college, Valerian launched Cherry Vale, an LGBTQIA+ media conglomerate and safe space for fans worldwide, where he is CEO and occasionally appears in productions. His childhood friend August manages finances and doubles as Valerian's personal bodyguard.

Valerian's Hobbies: 💋Card Games. From Solitare, Spades, and Poker, Valerian loves a large variety of card games. It's also helpful for his business. 💋Record and Perfume Collecting. 2 collection hobbies his mom got him into. 💋Playing Harp. His father played the harp for Valerian to help him sleep. 💋Drink Mixing. He got into it to sound more eloquent during business meetings but ended up really fixated on it.

DOUBLE ART JUMPSCARE >:3 !!! This is Valerian's best friend, August Valarajan, She was in the Indian Army for a couple of years but due to her injuries got a military discharge. She then moved to LA after she heard Valerian moved there.

[saltwaterbells]

Synopsis:

Chandra Dayal and Mariel Blackwater return for the ninth season of Dayal Legacy, revisiting old missions and hauntings, joined by Ille Raefa and newcomer Elaine Richards.

All across the galaxy, television screens beam their faces. Mariel Blackwater: bloody, breathing, living weapon and vessel to the searing light of stars. Chandra Dayal: the glittering heir, muse and musician, a face that could launch an thousand ships, and burn them all too. Barely a hair apart from being two sides of the same coin, and the two that have managed to survive this long.

With magic like theirs, the frothing gunfire fades to the public’s ears, their crimes made glossy through editing and military backing. But when old memories come calling, the blood on their hands not quite scrubbed off yet, a question emerges: how far have they gone to survive? What will the breaking point be?

Aesthetic: the cold void of space, freckles as constellations, fingers clenching in sheets, the sound of hundreds of boots marching in unison, sleek metal revolvers, silhouettes backlit by stars, blinding spotlights, the prickle in the back of your neck that you’re being watched, cigarettes on an empty stomach, copious amounts of black eyeliner and blood red lipstick, white-knuckled clenching of rosaries, the scent of oranges and clove, the scent of ozone and woodsmoke, foam-capped waves, the thick cloth of a uniform being rolled up to the elbow, dog tags burning around your neck, iron-tipped boots, a target with the bullseye blown out, the gleam of too sharp teeth

Themes: how do you define your humanity, what is the cost of a human life, how does the spotlight shape you, religion, humanity versus monstrosity, how can you understand gentleness when all you have known is war, healing, the cyclical nature of violence, (there are probably more but like, these are the vibes)

Jude Rambles: so this is the wip that has gripped me and is shaking me around like a dog with a chew toy. this project showed up in my head around december ish, even though the idea sort of had been floating around for a good while, and then i decided to expand it and now i am being eaten alive. it’s so easy to write?? i am attempting a new drafting technique, which is certainly helping and i need to try more often, but after working on bathtub gods for so long, this project is startlingly easy. and it’s so much fun too, i am having the time of my life! anyways, this is one of the more genre projects that has shown up in my brain and maybe i do need to write more science fiction and fantasy, or science fantasy like in this case.

Characters: Mariel Blackwater: 18 | It/Its | Space Irish Catholic, autistic, immensely religious, chronically guilty and hyper repressed, mildly an alcoholic, more weapon than human, avatar for the space catholic church. It’s a constellation witch, which means it can bring constellations to life and also, draw from their energy and create space storms and star lightening

Chandra Dayal: 19 | They/Them | Space Indian, bisexual & nonbinary the child of a legendary tragic love story between the heir to a media conglomerate and a general, who died when they were a baby, deeply burdened by their legacy (both the show and their actual legacy). Their magic is the harnessing of sound waves, to manipulate people’s emotion and also shatter things with sound waves.

Ille Raefa: 18 | Ve/Vim | Prophet, burdened by seeing all that will happen but in no particular order and without any particular logic, eldest sibling trauma, by far the most genre-aware and apathetic from the start, Ve is just waiting to die. Vis magic is visions, in vis dreams and sprinkled throughout vis day. Ve also is the most genre-aware character: ve knows the tropes, ve is just not entirely aware what type of book ve is in.

Elaine Richards: 18 | He/Him | Ultimate simp, from space kansas middle of nowhere who is so excited to be here and among his idols, desperately trying to fit in and make sure he doesn’t die or get kicked off of the show. Also eldest sibling trauma, except he’s not going to think about his siblings ever < 3. His magic is essentially magic metal bending

Taglist: (ask to be added/removed) @cordy-muses @cream-and-tea

[amongthieveshq]

[ A SINGLE PACKAGE HAS BEEN DELIVERED. INSIDE IS A LETTER FROM THE PROFESSOR THAT READS ]

hello  and  good  morning  libertalia  ! 

is  the  humidity  here  in  india  treating  you  well  ?  for  me  mumbai  has  been  an  absolute  whirlwind  of  excitement  and  adventure  !

the  chaos  of  the  bustling  streets  is  mesmerizing.  honking  horns,  colorful  saris,  and  the  scent  of  street  food  filling  the  air  create  a  symphony  of  sensations  that  is  uniquely  mumbai.  i  beg  you  all  to  try  pav  bhaji  or  panni  puri  at  any  of  the  local  food  stands.  the  culinary  scene  is  unforgettable.

the  people  here  are  incredibly  warm  and  welcoming.  connecting  with  the  locals  has  allowed  me  to  earn  a  firm  insight  about  their  lives  and  cultures. one  family  was  kind  enough  to  extend  an  invitation  to  their  daughter's  wedding.  enclosed  in  this  package  you  will  find  the  invitation  as  well  as  a  short  description  of  the  bhavnani  family.

the  bhavani's  kindness  is  an  extension  of  my  own.  though  i  understand  their  wealth  may  make  your  mouth  water  more  than  the  pav  bhaji  i  mentioned  earlier  ;  i  expect  all  of  you  to  act  on  your  best  behavior.  no  thievery  ,  no  scams.  but  alas  the  warning  may  be  mere  words  to  you  all.

signed, the professor.

[   UNDERNEATH  THE  LETTER  IS  A  RED  BOX  CONTAINING  INDIAN  SWEETS  AND  A  GOLD  ACCENTED  WEDDING  INVITATION.  IT  READS  ]

please  join  us  at  a  reception  to  celebrate  the  wedding  of  DIMPLE  &  VIKRAM  

FRIDAY  22ND  SEPTEMBER  2023  

8:00  PM  ONWARDS

HOSTED  AT  THE  BHAVNANI  ESTATE,  MUMBAI

[  THE  LAST  ITEM  IN  THE  PACKAGE  IS  A  DOSSIER  OF  THE  BHAVNANI  PATRIACH  ]

AKSHAY  BHAVNANI  is  an  indian  billionaire  businessman  who  is  currently  the  chairman  of  assurance  industries.  assurance  is  a  multinational  conglomerate  that  deals  in  energy,  petrochemicals,  natural  gas,  retail,  and  more.  they  are  the  largest  public  company  in  india  earning  a  net  income  of  $9.2  billion.  akshay  inherited  the  business  after  his  father's  passing  in  1996.  since  then, assurance  has  found  itself  in  multiple  controversies.  most  recently,  they  are  being  investigated  for  stock  manipulation,  criminal  conspiracy,  and  corruption.

akshay's  only  daughter  dimple  will  be  marrying  vikram  singh  at  his  multi-million  dollar  estate  right  here  in  mumbai.  guarded  well,  the  bhavnani  estate  is  littered  with  priceless  artifacts,  art,  and  jewels.  while  none  of  which  are  useful  in  finding  avery's  treasure,  they  are  just  as  appetizing  for  those  in  search  of  treasure.

OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION.

welcome to our first event ! we kept it simple as this event is meant for our characters to get to know each other ; as well as establish where our characters are at the moment.

the event is a formal event. all characters should be dressed to reflect that. unlike western weddings , the bride will be dressed in red. not white. your character should refrain from wearing red !

our event will begin when in character interactions do on FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 22ND @ 12:00 PM PST.

all event starters should be tagged: at:eventone

if you'd like to post your characters outfits: at:outfits

the event will last FIVE DAYS. it officially ends on TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 26TH.

[bestoneindia]

Bestone Industries Pvt. Ltd., fondly known as BIPL deals in a number of premium beverages including packaged drinking water, soda, and alcoholic beverages. BIPL embraces the entrepreneurial spirit and innovative and bold ideas when it comes to diversifying its product range. The company's diversified product portfolio and experienced professionals make it a trusted brand in the industry.

[indizombie]

Businesses close to Modi and his political circle have done especially well. The most prominent examples are Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries and the Adani Group, conglomerates that reach into numerous areas of Indian life. Their combined market power has grown gigantic in recent years: The flagship stocks of each company are worth about six times more than they were when Modi became prime minister. Some smaller companies have been the target of high-profile raids by tax-enforcement agencies. "If you’re not the two A’s” — Adani or Ambani — it can be treacherous to navigate India’s regulatory byways, said Arvind Subramanian, an economist at Brown University who served under Modi’s government as chief economic adviser from 2014 to 2018. "Domestic investors feel a little bit vulnerable,” he added.

Alex Travelli, ‘India is chasing China’s economy. Something is holding it back’, Japan Times

[transgenderer]

The next surprise in store for Mellaart was the peculiar layout of Catal Huyuk. It was a town without streets. One dwelling abutted on the next as in a row of terrace houses, except that there were no intervening gardens or streets, just an unbroken succession of rows. It became clear in the course of Mellaart's excavations that the houses were mutually inaccessible and formed self-contained cells. Only in Catal Huyuk II, a relative recent level dating from ca. 5700 BC, was it possible to discern a narrow doorway leading into a courtyard. All the other levels so far excavated consisted of streetless honeycomb-cells.

One can conceive of many odditoes, but not of a500-yard expanse of houses almost 300 yards deep and totally without means of intercommunication. Even honeycombs have some form of access.

Mellaart found the answer in some angular indentations, four to six inches wide, in the upper part of the surviving interior walls. These regularly occurred near the fireplace, or where the smoke vent would logicallu have been. Was it possible that these dents had been made by a loose length of timber which dug into the wall when propped against it? If so, why should the beam have left so neat and distinct an impression in the plaster? Explanations always sound plausible once a bright idea has dawned. Right or wrong, Mellaart surmised that a runged ladder must have been propped against the wall and that its sharp edges dug into the plaster at every step the user took.

This produced a 'town plan' reminiscent of the American Indian pueblos, a settlement who inhabitants can only get from one house to the next via ladder and roof. Evidently, some inventions are not unique to any one place and period.

Both the pueblos and Catal Huyuk are based on the same underlying idea: if a town was to be defended against outside attack it had to be rendered impenetrable. This could be achieve either by erecting defensive perimeter walls, as at Jericho, or, where lack of stone precluded their construction, by some other means.

The solution devised by the Stone Age inhabitants of Catal Huyuk was tactically inspired. They could only defend their mud-brick town, which a few heavy cloudbursts might have reduced to sludge, by offsetting the lack of a perimeter wall with hundreds of smaller obstacles. Accordingly, they butted dwelling against dwelling to form a streetless conglomerate. This meant that their enemies would have have had to breach wall after wall without ever encountering a street that could accelerate their advance, just a succession of family groups ready and waiting to repel the foe.

-The Hitties, Lehmann

note that they were terraced, so they still had windows, just no doors

[fatehbaz]

Nordelta, one of Buenos Aires’s most exclusive areas, is a conglomerate of gated communities with over 50,000 residents. It sits on the wetlands of the River Paraná, second only to the Amazon in South America. And it was built by emptying and refilling canals, which [...] reduced the wetlands’ capacity to absorb rainfall. Nordelta opened in 2001, right when the economy collapsed after a decade of extreme neoliberal adjustments. In 2001, Argentina had five presidents in the span of 11 days, police killed 39 citizens during protests, and personal bank accounts were frozen [...]. Nordelta’s main attraction for consumers was [...] a distinguished, United States lifestyle. [...] Master-planned communities (MPCs) are privately built and designed neighborhoods in the city outskirts constructed by large-scale developers, offering amenities, services, and rules through homeowner associations. [...]

While driving through the main road to the conglomerate, [...] to the right, malls, apartments, and private schools with English names that are only accessible by car. [...] Over 8,000 workers cross these gates daily to provide multiple services. [...] These workers cannot walk on the avenues because “Nordelta residents do not want to see them around,” [...]. This segregationist structure of Nordelta emerged alongside the expansion of the neoliberal state. While Nordelta today resembles Miami, it was initially thought of as the French ville nouvelles (“new towns”), which aimed to integrate rural migrants within European cities.

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In 1977, engineer Julián Astolfoni acquired the first plot of land from the descendants of [...] a general who had obtained the lands previously peopled by Guaraníes and Carupás after fighting in the “Desert Campaign against the Indians.” When Astolfoni got the plot, Nordelta was conceptualized to fix the problem of undesired urban sprawl at a time when the [...] state of the last civic-military dictatorship was trying to “eradicate” the villas miseria (shantytowns) for being “filthy” spaces threatening private property and national moralities.  

The project goals shifted once it was finally approved in 1992 when Astolfoni partnered with businessmen [EC] and other North American corporations, [...] including [...] a U.S. real estate specialized in MPCs. [...] Nordelta retained the enduring idea of the desert as a space to be filled. Like every pioneer narrative, it positioned Astolfoni and [EC], the engineer-corporate duo, as heroes saving “neglected” environments and conquering a wetland that would remain otherwise “vast, useless, dangerous, and vacant.” They would do this by emulating the U.S. MPCs of the 1960s, the ones that turned public malls into consumption centers [...].

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In the 1990s, president Carlos Menem’s government extended neoliberal measures and promoted Miami as a tourist destination for middle-class families [...]. Despite its diversity, Miami became a symbol of whiteness and economic success [...]. The neoliberal reconfiguration of white exceptionalism as a desire to emulate western geographies became Nordelta’s mark, offering global lifestyles to the elites who can now “live like in Miami, but a few miles away from the Buenos Aires Obelisk,” as an Argentinian newspaper with connections to Nordelta claimed. [...]

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In 2001, when the machines were opening the soil, a woman [...] found ceramic pieces and bones. The finding led to an organized movement [...]. A team of archaeologists who had been working in the area before visited the place, corroborated the existence of an ancestral site, and registered it as the Punta Canal archaeological site. [...] Despite protests [...], the company sent excavators and destroyed a significant portion of the site. [...]  [T]he organized group of neighbors and Indigenous peoples constituting the Movimiento en Defensa de la Pacha Mama set out to protect the archaeological remains and the Indigenous cemetery [...]. [T]heir organization pushed for the recognition of the land, now named Punta Querandí, as communitarian in 2020 [...]. Furthermore, [...] the movement achieved the return and reburial of 42 bodies from ancestors whom an archaeologist from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had exhumed in 1925. [...]

[T]his long, complex, and well-documented story of the emergence of Punta Querandí [is told] in the museum, el Museo Autónomo de Gestión Indígena, which also has a digital archive. Despite the developers’ representation of the area as wild and rural, Punta Querandí has “made visible that the reality of Indigenous Peoples also occurs in Buenos Aires,” [...]. [T]he desegregationist project of Punta Querandí, a land not attached to geneticized or archaeologized visions of Indigeneity, but rather a Territory where Guaraní, Qom, Colla, Moqoit, or Aymara Peoples, among many others, can reunite [...].

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Punta Querandí and its desegregationist project shows the power of edges. [...]

Exemplified by Nordelta, MPCs generate profit by transforming rural into elite lands while rearticulating racial and spatial borders that make distinctions sharper, more guarded, and less porous -- between centers and peripheries, grounded and flooded land [...]. MPCs originated in the U.S. and continue to circulate American imaginaries of race, segregation, and neoliberal commons worldwide. [...]  By selling reductionist archetypes, such as the fantasy of white Miami, in order to profit from them, real estate developments obscure how environments continue to be complex, multiple, and diverse despite the violence enacted upon them.

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Text by: Mara Dicenta. “The Violence of Gated Communities in Buenos Aires’s Wetlands.” Edge Effects. 20 April 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[generallemarc]

Masterpost of all consumer companies still operating in Russia, and the brands they own

These are the companies that think it’s ok to do business as usual knowing that the money they pay in taxes goes to fund Putin’s war machine. Apologies if I get some of these companies wrong, or if I identify a company that doesn’t actually sell to us everyday consumers-alot of these are foreign and I’ve only got Google to tell me what they do. I know that this is long, but please read it. So many others have left-we can pressure them to leave too. 

Agrana Group-Based in Austria, they operate the following food brands:  Moravskoslezské cukrovary s.r.o,  Magyar Cukor Zrt.,  Slovenské cukrovary s.r.o.,  S.C. Agrana Romania S.A.,  Hungrana Kft.,  S.C.A.F.D. Tandarei S.R.L.,   Agrana Fruit S.A.S.

Aimbridge Hospitality-Based in America, they run hotels under this name as well as the brand Interstate Hotels & Resorts

Air China

Alibaba

Anadolu Efes-Turkish brewery that also operates  Efes Breweries International B.V. in the Netherlands and has a majority stake in the company responsible for distributing Coca-Cola within Turkey. Coke itself has paused all operations within Russia.

Anta Sports Products Ltd-Chinese-based sporting goods manufacturer.

AnyDesk Software

Ariston Thermo-Italo-Dutch company that manufactures primarily heating systems under the brands Ariston, Chaffoteaux, Elco, Racold, Régent, Atag, NTI, HTP, Cuenod, Ecoflam and Thermowatt

Asics-Japanese sporting goods store known internationally for their running shoes.

Auchan-French retailer that operates Ceetrus and the financial services company Oney

Babolat-French sporting goods company

Bajaj Auto-Indian scooter and motorcycle manufacturer

Benetton-Italian Fashion brand

Bharat Petroluem

Binbit-Mexican mobile entertainment company

Bonduelle-French processed vegetable company

Calzedonia-Italian fashion group

Carl’s Jr.-American restaurant that also operates as Hardee’s

Check Point Software-Israeli cybersecurity firm

China Mobile and China United Communications Service

Chipita-Greek food company that operates the brands 7DAYS, Fineti, and Chipicao

Cofix Coffee-Israeli coffee shop that also has locations in Poland

Colin’s-Turkish clothing company

Corendon Airlines

Cremonini Group-Italian food company that operates the brands Chef Express, Mokà, Mr. Sandwich and Roadhouse Grill.

De Cecco-Italian pasta manufacturer that also sells olive oil, sauces and vinegar

Diadora-Italian fashion brand

Etam-French clothing company

Etihad Airways

Giorgio Armani

Global Fashion Group

Hard Rock Cafe

JD.com-Chinese online retailer.

JDE Peet’s-Dutch beverage company that owns the following brands: Bell Tea (New Zealand)Bravo Caboclo (Brazil)Café do Ponto (Brazil )Café HAG Café Pelé (Brazil)Café Prima Cafe Switch Campos Coffee Caffiato Damasco (Brazil)Douwe Egberts, Friele ,Gevalia, Grand Mère, Harris(coffee filters in australia) papers in Australia)Horniman's Tea Hummingbird (New Zealand), Marcilla (Spain) Mastro Lorenzo, Maxwell House(USA).

Mod’s Hair-French hair styling company

Qatar Airways

Quicksilver-American clothing brand

Raiffeisen Bank International

Riot Games-American company owned by Tencent, publisher of League of Legends, Valorant, and Teamfight Tactics

SAIC Motors-Chinese automotive firm

Sbarro Pizza-American restaurant

Storck-German candy company which produces the Chateau brand chocolate sold in Aldi’s and the Werther’s Original candies.

Tencent-Chinese tech conglomerate

TGI Friday’s-American restaurant

Tupperware

Turkish Airlines

Please add on with any you find that I’ve missed.  @silent-calling @ford-ye-fiji