#ballute

[ultimateoptimus]

Frogman Fubblegum SCUBAllutes

And Now, Femmes and Gentlemechs, Bolts and Gears, Children of All Ages, UltimateOptimus Presents Yet Another UltimateOptimus DreamFactory Frogman Fubblegum AU Concept In Action:

Frogman Fubblegum SCUBAllutes!

Marvel, bolts and gears, as Frogboy Finn Mertens and Froggirl Princess Bubblegum, ever the two Junior Diver Test Pilots, demonstrate their Frogman SCUBA Rigs' all new, all different SCUBAllute Ejection Systems as brainstormed in the Junior Diver Fantasy Zone!

Bonus: Frogboy Finn Mertens and Froggirl Princess Bubblegum in SCUBAllutes and Inflatable Dive Jackets both inflated by Breathable Air Cartridge Ripcord Detonation for Maximum Underwater Junior Diver Self-Rescue and Puffy Dive Jacket and Rescue Inner Tube SCUBAllute Cuteness Overload!

@aae-demon-zone333

@creepie-treattricker

@fubblegummers

[justmewondering56]

[nctrnm]

NctrnmFM(nctrnm.com): "Never Been Before" by Ballute.

[johnthestitcher]

My vintage fez, bought off eBay.

[roughentumble]

Meet Balloonskier

oh

my

fucking

GOD!!!!!!

I AM FILLED!!! WITH JOY AND DELIGHT!!!!!!!! OH HE'S SIMPLY THE MOST WONDERFUL THING IVE EVER SEEN

[dozydawn]

“Palestinian schoolgirls demonstrate against the Israeli army's intention to confiscate land that will be used for the construction of an army base in the West Bank village of Deir Ballut. Some 200 villagers took part in the peaceful demonstration.”

Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh.

18 October 1999.

[cowboymaterials]

The U.S. military’s recent $35 million contract to do construction at its secret base in Israel went to a joint venture that includes an American firm and an Israeli one. The Israeli company, Y.D. Ashush Infrastructure, has been involved in many large-scale infrastructure and public works projects — including building an illegal settlement in occupied Palestinian territory.

In a section on its website touting its projects, Ashush mentions construction work in the settlement of Leshem. Originally planned to include nearly 700 homes, Leshem was constructed in the 2010s as a satellite of Alei Zahav, a settlement established in 1982. 

“I estimate that Leshem has tripled the number of settlers in Alei Zahav.”

“Leshem is an Israeli settlement that was established in 2010, officially as a ‘neighborhood’ of an older settlement called Alei Zahav,” Dror Etkes — founder of Kerem Navot, an Israeli organization that monitors Israeli land policy in the West Bank — told The Intercept. Etkes said describing new communities as “neighborhoods” was a “trick” used by settlers to make it look like no new settlement was being constructed, since such moves have often drawn international condemnation. [...]

Leshem has been in the news in recent years for hostility to its neighboring Palestinian villages. In 2020, the settlement was accused of deliberately dumping its sewage into the farmlands of nearby Deir Ballut, preventing its olive harvest and destroying trees, some of which date back to Roman times. [...]

Considered illegal under international law and by nearly every country in the world apart from the U.S. and Israel, settlements have continued to grow even as international opinion tilts strongly against them. An occupying military force like Israel transferring civilian populations into occupied territory such as the West Bank is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. [...]

The company was referenced in the Pentagon’s August 2 contract announcement for the construction of a “life-support area” in Israel. Other documents revealed this to be a euphemism for the construction of barracks-like facilities to house U.S. military personnel on its unacknowledged base deep in the Negev desert, code-named “Site 512,” as The Intercept reported. Four other bids were considered, according to the Defense Department’s contract announcement.

It is not clear how much of the $35 million joint venture contract, shared with the Colorado construction company Bryan Construction, went to Ashush. Bryan Construction did not respond to requests for comment. Ashush does not appear in public databases that track U.S. government contracts, meaning there is no transparency around how much public money is flowing to the company. [...]

In 2015, when U.S. diplomats investigated allegations of vandalism, including the uprooting of thousands of Palestinian-owned olive trees in the West Bank by settlers from an Israeli “outpost,” the settlers assaulted them with stones. Though the State Department confirmed the incident and provided a video to Israeli authorities, the controversial head of the Samaria Regional Council Yossi Dagan, an ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, called for the diplomats’ expulsion, accusing them of being spies.

“The land which the settlement is sitting on was looted by the Israeli government from two Palestinian communities.”

A report from January 2022 described settlers from Alei Zahav destroying a Palestinian farmer’s olive trees with assistance from the Israeli military. The military, at the behest of the settlers, ordered the farmer off the land and seized a tractor, claiming that the land was owned by the Israeli state. 

“The land which the settlement is sitting on was looted by the Israeli government from two Palestinian communities … in the 1980s by declaring it as ‘state land,’ which was allocated to Alei Zahav later,” said Etkes, the Israeli expert on settlements.

Months later, in July, another report described settlers destroying another nearby farm.

November 3, 2023

[historicalfirearms]

Top Attack SMArt 155 In Ukraine

A look at the German SMArt 155, a Sensor Fuzed Munition, currently in use in Ukraine. It releases a pair of fire-and-forget top-attack submunitions. The submunitions use a ballute and parachute to slow their descent and allow the onboard infrared sensor and millimeter wave radar to locate its target and fire down an explosively formed penetrator.

Check out the accompanying article for this video here. 

[kookaburrabugle]

KEEP SMILING, SAY VERY LITTLE AND LET PARTISAN MEDIA EXPLAIN YOU TO THE PUBLIC: HAS KAMALA HARRIS FOUND THE SECRET TO MODERN ELECTION SUCCESS?

WASHINGTON DC “THESE DAYS, IMAGE is absolutely everything; substance counts for almost nothing. And you know why? Because substantively these candidates have very little separating them.” The words of long-time US political analyst Owen Ballut, who has been covering American Presidential elections since 1948. “Abortion, guns and medical care are the divides but only really on emphasis. And…

[justmewondering56]

however I do not like how much bleach are on supposed “worker clothes”

[nctrnm]

#NowPlaying: "Never Been Before" by Ballute

[johnthestitcher]

Yes, rhinestones and all, this is a real Shriner's Fez. Inside is embroidered the name of the man who wore it once upon a time.

No - I am not a Mason or a Shriner. But I do have a collection of headwear. The tassel {which is 17 inches long!} weighs more than the rest of the fez! 'Ballut Abyad' is 'White Oak' in Arabic, and this particular Shrine is in New Mexico. I purchased it off eBay.

[docpiplup]

The Rabadis: The story of some expelled Cordobans who ended up founding a kingdom

History has buried the Rabadíes in the “common grave” of memory, some people from Córdoba who one day rose up against the power of the Umayyad emirate of Córdoba and who, expelled, ended up founding a kingdom in the heart of the Mediterranean that lasted more than a century. Manuel Harazem has rescued the “odyssey” of these Cordobans who one day in the year 818 said enough to the Umayyad power, which razed their neighborhood, Saqunda, to the ground. His remains are still visible, hopefully, in the depths of the site where Rem Koolhas' South Palace was to be built in Miraflores. Next year marks 1,200 years since the beginning of an unknown yet fascinating odyssey: how some expelled Cordobans ended up conquering Crete, appointing an emir who bore the name of Córdoba and even giving its name to a city.

This Friday, Manuel Harazem presented a book that can be purchased in Córdoba bookstores and also on Amazon, and which he titled The Odyssey of the Rabadis, subtitling it as the first Hispanic exile. The story begins in Córdoba and ends in Constantinople, present-day Istanbul, where the Byzantine Empire imprisoned the emir of the kingdom of the Rabadis, the Andalusian Cordobans who had dared to challenge its rule with an independent kingdom in the middle of the Mediterranean. But the book is much more.

"By 818 the situation for Córdoba was that of being the capital of the kingdom, enjoying considerable prosperity that had allowed the creation of a huge suburb outside the walls and the existence of an autocratic government that handled tax levy with an iron fist. Crushed by taxes, the 30,000 inhabitants of the suburb took up arms against the emir. I say 30,000 to say, because there were probably many more,” Harazem detailed during the presentation of the book.

"The rim of a dirham was needed for the revolt to be successful. But it was not like that. Once surrounded, a brutal repression was unleashed that had several consequences: the death by sword or crucifixion of a good part of the inhabitants and the sending of the rest into exile. The suburb was razed to the ground and the emir placed a curse on it that nothing would ever be built there again. Damn, as we saw with the South Palace, it is still perfectly valid,” the writer explained, also with notes of humor. The remains of that neighborhood have been visible until recently, when they have been buried again by tons of earth.

After the massacre of 818, some Cordobans left for Fez, welcomed by the emir Idriss II. Others marched to Toledo, from where they were expelled again. From there they went on a long exile to Greece, settled in Alexandria and stood up to Byzantium, founding an independent state. “According to canonical history,” warns Harazem, who wanted to investigate and deepen, and above all put an end to the cursed history of these exiled Cordobans, for whom the official history is nothing more than pirates who dedicated themselves to plundering the coasts. Ten years later, they are again expelled from Alexandria by forces from Baghdad. From there they finally arrived at the island of Crete, “founding a capital which they named Rabdh or Arrabal* in honor of the Rabdh or Arrabal of Saqunda, founding a dynasty of emirs, the first of whom, born in Pedroche, therefore bore the nickname of al-Balluti (from Fahs al-Ballut, the Plain of the Acorns, the Arabic name of the current valley of Los Pedroches), and the last the nickname of al-Qurtubi, be it The Cordoban” recalls the writer.

I have tried to stick strictly to the sources and texts of contemporary authors that were related to those events. And if I have any merit, it is probably that I have completely sequenced the story in a single book,” says Harazem, author of other self-published books. "On the other hand, I have contributed small studies and especially I have launched a theory about the name of the city they founded there, Rabdh al-Khandaq**, making it fall back to the feeling of longing, of ghurba, since I strongly suspect that that first part of it Rabdh refers to Rabdh Shaqunda, the suburb from which they came and from which they were violently expelled. No other city in the Arab world was founded with the name of one of its parts.No city was named Arrabal***,” he details.

But Harazem goes further. The subtitle of the first Hispanic exile advances the comparison it makes with that suffered 1,100 years later by other Spaniards, the Republicans, who were not given the opportunity to go into exile, but rather had to escape to do so. Also, like the Rabadíes from Córdoba, they left their mark wherever they settled. And his memory also ended up buried in a common grave.

But the Saqunda rebellion is, for Harazem, the first revolt of the class struggle documented in the Iberian Peninsula. It does not say that there were others before, but it does say that this one is perfectly documented by some remains that are no longer seen on which a parking lot is going to be built to know, precisely, the historical past of Córdoba.

More about this topic

* The Spanish word arrabal (suburb/outskirts) comes from the Andalusian Arabic الرَبَض (arrabáḍ), and this from classical Arabic رَبَض‎ (rabaḍ, "outskirts"). The word raval and arrabalde, in Catalan and Galician respectively, have the same root and meaning.

** Rabḍ al-ḫandaq (ربض الخندق, often given the meaning of "Castle of the Moat", so rabḍh may not come from rabaḍ, but from classical Arabic ribāṭ, a kind of fortification, that is the origin of toponyms like capital of Morocco Rabat, and some in the Iberian Countries, most of them derived from rābiṭa, La Ràpita, sa Rápita, La Rábida, La Rábita, Calatrava, Arrábida) was hellenized as Χάνδαξ (Chándax) or Χάνδακας (Chándakas) and Latinized as Candia, one of the names given to Crete.

*** Fun fact: there's no city called Arrabal, but in Castilla y León, concretely in the province of Zamora, there's a small town called Arrabalde. The province of Zamora is close to Galicia and in some parts of Zamora Galician is still spoken, mainly in region of Sanabria.

[limhongjae]

BALLUTE - LOOKBOOK

[iconsbasic]

[turbofanatic]

Page done! And somehow I stuck to my one-page a month schedule even with starting late!

Perspective was very hard on this one but clay figurines really helped (James Gurney, Mr. Dinotopia himself, uses clay figures a lot for reference, so if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me).

This thing is dropping out of orbit and we have a series of reentry devices, including a heat shield, massive para-sail partly inspired by ballute (balloon parachute) concepts, then rockets.

Coming up soon: Hive Srini is pissed! Let’s see what they can do!