Amphibious Buses – They Float on Water and Ride the City Streets

Posted by Ihor Cap
History

By User:Leonard G. (Own work) [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

Amphibious vehicles have been around for centuries. Some of the earliest known ones existed around the mid half of the 18th century.  The land/sea coach or land/sea carriage invented by Neapolitan Prince Raimondo of Sansevero in 1750 is the earliest known example. Amphibious vehicles were steam-powered in the 19th century. They became petrol combustion-engine powered in the 20th century. There purposes and applications have since expanded. There uses today are as varied as the colors of the rainbow.
“Amphibuses”
Amphibious buses or “amphibuses” are all the fuss these days. They ride on hard surface roads and water. This is particularly evident in the tourist industry all around the world. No longer do they look like the old styled trucks and barges deployed in World War 2 for military use. Replacing these old, amphibious DUKW assault vehicles, (a.k.a. duck boats) are an assortment of new, 21st century, sleek-looking amphibious tour buses in harbor and river cities everywhere.
Amphibious Duck Tour Bus Videos
See for yourself why these amphibious tour buses are growing in popularity. The  amphibus ride and launch videos compiled here include but are not limited to Canada’s Lady Dive in Ottawa, the amphibus in Old Montreal, Harry Hippo Bus Float Tours in Toronto, Harbour Hopper Bus Tour in Halifax, the Amphibus in Glasgow (Scotland), the Splashbus in Rotterdam, the Riverride in Budapest, the Busboat in Croatia, London Duck Tours on the Thames, the Amphibian Coach in Malta, the amphibious bus in Liverpool, Singapore Duck Tours, the San Francisco Duck Bus Tour, Duck Tours in Boston and the Arizona desert, Austin Texas Duck Adventures, the Terra Wind RV motor coach home and amphibious bus, Philadelphia’s Ride the Duck, and other amphibian bus related videos in Korea, Japan, Dubai, and elsewhere around the globe.


If you do not see the video playlist above, then click the following link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB833FF0AE45E1215
See Wikipedia and do an “Amphibious vehicle” search for more information on this topic.

Ihor Cap, Ph.D. is a Web Author and Dad.

«FATHER OF THE GENOCIDE CONVENTION»

by Lubomyr Luciuk

          Only seven people came to bury him. He rests beneath a simple stone in New York’s Mount Hebron cemetery, the sole clue to his historical importance an inscription incised below his name - “Father Of The Genocide Convention.”
        

Raphael Lemkin, People of Truth Poster

  As a graduate student I was obliged to read his book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress, frankly more door-stopper than page-turner. Nowadays, with advocates for “humanitarian intervention” shilling the notion of a “duty to intervene” whenever and wherever necessary to “stop genocide,” Dr. Raphael Lemkin’s name and words are better known. After all he fathered the term “genocide” by combining the root words – geno (Greek for family or race) and – cidium (Latin for killing) then doggedly lobbied the UN’s member states until they adopted a Convention on Genocide, 9 December 1948, his crowning achievement.
          Because of the horrors committed by Nazi Germany in the Second World War what is often forgotten, however, is that Lemkin’s thinking about an international law to punish perpetrators of what he originally labeled the “Crime of Barbarity” came not in response to the Holocaust but rather following the 1915 massacres of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians within the Ottoman Turkish empire.
          Likewise overlooked were Lemkin’s views on Communist crimes against humanity. In a 1953 lecture in New York City, for example, he described the “destruction of the Ukrainian nation” as the “classic example of Soviet genocide,” adding insightfully: "the Ukrainian is not and never has been a Russian. His culture, his temperament, his language, his religion, are all different...to eliminate (Ukrainian) nationalism...the Ukrainian peasantry was sacrificed...a famine was necessary for the Soviet and so they got one to order...if the Soviet program succeeds completely, if the intelligentsia, the priest, and the peasant can be eliminated [then] Ukraine will be as dead as if every Ukrainian were killed, for it will have lost that part of it which has kept and developed its culture, its beliefs, its common ideas, which have guided it and given it a soul, which, in short, made it a nation...This is not simply a case of mass murder. It is a case of genocide, of the destruction, not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation."
          Yet Ukraine’s declaration that the Great Famine of 1932-1933 (known as the Holodomor) was genocide has secured very little official recognition from other states, Canada one of those few. Most have succumbed to an ongoing Holodomor-denial campaign orchestrated by the Russian Federation’s barkers who insist famine occurred throughout the USSR in the 1930’s, did not target Ukrainians and so can’t be called genocide. They ignore key evidence – the fact that all foodstuffs were confiscated from Soviet Ukraine even as its borders were blockaded, preventing relief supplies from getting in, or anyone from getting out. And how the Kremlin’s men denied the existence of catastrophic famine conditions as Ukrainian grain was exported to the West. Millions could have been saved but were instead allowed to starve. Most victims were Ukrainians who perished on Ukrainian lands. There’s no denying that.
          A thirst for Siberian oil and gas explains why Germany, France and Italy have become Moscow’s handmaidens, refusing to acknowledge the Holodomor and blocking Ukraine’s membership in the European Union, kowtowing to Russia’s geopolitical claim of having some “right” to interfere in the affairs of countries in its so-called “near abroad.” More puzzling was a 28 January 2009 pronouncement by Pinhas Avivi, deputy director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry: “We regard the Holodomor as a tragedy but in no case do we call it genocide…the Holocaust is the only genocide to us.” Yet if only the Shoah is genocide what happened to the Armenians, or to the Rwandans, not to mention to those many millions of Ukrainians?
          This year the 28th November is the date on which the Holodomor’s victims will be hallowed. Thousands of postcards bearing Lemkin’s image and citing his words have been mailed to ambassadors worldwide with governments from Belgium to Botswana, from Brazil to Bhutan, being asked to acknowledge what was arguably the greatest crime against humanity to befoul 20th century European history. There is no doubt that Lemkin knew the famine in Soviet Ukraine was genocidal. If the world chooses to ignore what he said than what this good man fathered – the word “genocide” – will lose all meaning, forevermore.

           Professor Lubomyr Luciuk teaches political geography at the Royal Military College of Canada and edited Holodomor: Reflections on the Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine (Kashtan Press, 2008).

Source: Homin Ukrainy (Ukrainian Echo),  February, 2, 2010 Vol. LXII, No.5 (3345)
Photo: Raphael Lemkin By Український інститут національної пам'яті - People of Truth, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45274812

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