Month: February 2022

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Fake Yemen stamp 1966, deposed King Badr studies grave choices of John F Kennedy

North Yemen’s Rassids Royal House was forced out in 1962 and the Mutawakalite Kingdom abolished. On the other side of the world in 1963, American President John F Kennedy was assassinated. It is kind of strange then that a Mutawakalite postal authority would issue a stamp on JFK’s memorial opening in Virginia in 1967. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The story of how this stamp came to be begins with an American child stamp collector named Bruce Conde. He wrote a letter to then North Yemeni King Ahmad hoping to be sent real Yemeni stamps. He got a letter back from then young Prince Badr who was also a stamp collector. The two became pen pals and eventually Conde was invited to North Yemen. He converted to Shia Islam and was decreed a Yemeni citizen. In 1962, King Ahmad died of natural causes and Badr became King. Before the stamps of North Yemen could reflect having a philatelist King, Nasser’s Egypt funded a coup by the Royal guard that forced King Badr and Bruce Conde out of the capital Sana. From mountainous areas of the country, King Badr, with the support of Saudi Arabia was able to maintain an insurgency. Bruce Conde was authorized to issue stamps to raise funds for the insurgency. Eventually the Saudis tired of the lack of success and made peace with the recognized Egyptian backed government. King Badr went into exile in London where he died in 1996. Bruce Conde was left without a country as he renounced USA citizenship and North Yemen renounced him and his stamps. He moved to Morocco.

King Badr in 1962 during his short time on the Throne

Since this stamp is fake, there is no catalog value.

What to do about a grave memorial for President Kennedy was an area of discussion after his death. The family initially intended to have him interred in the family cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts. His died soon after childbirth child Patrick had been buried there a few months before. The widow Jaqueline Kennedy however had other ideas. She wanted him buried in a valley at Arlington National Cemetary that Kennedy had found peaceful during visits there. She also insisted on an eternal flame. This was inspired by two things. An eternal flame for France’s fallen soldiers at the Arc de Triumph she had seen on her Paris trip. Also the T. H. White book Candle in the Wind that was the basis for the play Camelot, a family favorite. Many thought the eternal flame tacky, but thought it would be wrong to go against the widow’s wishes.

Jacqueline Kennedy contracted family friend and landscape architect John Warneche. There was a simple New England style black granite  headstone flat to the ground of grass with the body facing the Washington monument and in the shadow of Arlington House, the former home of General Robert E Lee. When the three acre site was ready in early 1967, John F Kennedy and two children died in infancy were interred. Later they were joined by Senator Robert Kennedy after his own assassination and later by the widow Jacqueline upon her natural death in 1996 and Senator Edward Kennedy in 2009.

The grave stone and eternal flame at Arlington National Cemetery. Robert E Lee’s former family home is in the background.

The Eternal Flame went out briefly twice. Once when a group of Catholic schoolchildren sprinkled holy water on it. Later during an exeptionally heavy rain the electric gas igniter was flooded and shorted out. In 2012, the igniter system of unique design started clicking loudly and was replaced while keeping the flame going.

A real American stamp honoring President Kennedy’s eternal flame

Well my drink is empty. I think I will have another since a nice story was found from even a fake stamp. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. Next week’s won’t be fake, I promise.

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Great Britain 1987, Using Victoria and Albert to remind of paternalistic one nation Toryism

This is a great semi modern stamp. It gently and unthreateningly reminds how things once were. In doing so, it subtly reminds the 1987 Tory who he is, and maybe where a controversial Thatcher fits in. Pretty cool for a small piece of gummed paper that proves you paid the postage fee. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

There is a lot going on this stamp. Three scenes unrelated but brought together by being part of the Victoria Reign that had begun 150 years prior to this stamp. With four stamps in the set, I did another one here,https://the-philatelist.com/2019/03/22/great-britain1988-remembering-the-victorian-era-150-years-later/ , you get 12 views of Victorian Britain.

Todays stamp is issue A359, a 31 Penny stamp issued by Great Britain on September 8th, 1987. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 65 cents whether used or unused.

The first view, on the left, is of the Prince Consort Albert Memorial in London. Prince Albert was a large influence on Queen Victoria, preaching progress, a less political Monarchy, and more looking out for the common man. Prince Albert died young at age 42 of typhoid fever, and for the 40 years remaining in her Reign, Victoria wore black.

Victoria had the final say on what type of memorial should be. What was chosen was a bronze statue protected by a ciborium canopy as in a gothic church. It was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, a noted period gothic revival architect. The grounds near the Albert Hall had aligorical representations of the people, ideas and places important to Prince Albert. Showing the many aspects of Albert’s life, the Memorial gives a sense of his importance to the era.

The bronze Albert statue under the canopy. The book he is holding is the guide to the London Exposition he was so involved with.

The other two scenes are related showing a ballot box and long time but off and on Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. As more people had a say on their political representatives, Disraeli sought to imbue his party with a common set of principles so they would no longer just be vessels used by an individual politician. For the Tories he advocated a one nation conservatism that combined preservation of the institutions, with a program to uplift the common man. On this Disraeli and Victoria were simpatico.

Interestingly the one nation also had an aspect of including outsiders in the one nation. This perhaps comes from Disraeli’s Jewish heritage although his father had converted the family to Anglican when he was 12. As Prime Minister, There was much British involvement in trying to role back the declining Ottoman Empire. Disraeli would probably point to the Suez Canal as a benefit of the policy. It is not hard to see the British, Anglican power being used to move along the idea of a modern Jewish nation state in the then Ottoman territory of Palestine. Well when you include outsiders their goals become your goals. Indeed the current Tory manifesto expands the idea of one nation conservatism to a one world one. Are you sure about that one guys?

The Right, Honourable Member of Parliament Damian Green. He is the current Tory head of the One Nation caucus.

Well my drink is empty and this stamp allows for three additional toasts. To Victoria, to Albert, and Mr. Disraeli. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Haiti 1969, Should the lottery schools teach the alphabet or farming in Creole

90 percent of the schools in Haiti are run by foreigners. The 10 percent of schools run by the government are for the elite and teach a French curriculum designed to prepare the student for overseas university. How is some sort of reform possible when 80% speak Creole. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

This stamp doesn’t look like much and that is pretty reflective of the then current state of education. Haiti had a desire to design a local education system. However qualified local teachers who get paid regularly is not an asset of Haiti. So what to do? Put some lipstick on the pig and kick the can down the road.

Todays stamp is issue A132 a 1.5 Gourde airmail stamp issued by Haiti on August 12th, 1969. The top three values of the issue were airmail stamps. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 80 cents unused. There is a canceled value implying at least Haiti had a system of airmail at the time. The Haitian postal system is even worse than it’s education system. The last stamp issued that is not considered bogus came out in 2003. In 2000 the last airmail stamp came out in the form of a new surcharge on a stamp from 1968.

Haiti won it’s independence from France in the early 19th century. The new constitution proclaimed a right to a free, compulsory public elementary education. What limited budget there was in Haiti were directed at a few schools for the elite in the capital modeled on French schools so the elite will be prepared for a French or Canadian University. In the early 20th century there was an American occupation of Haiti attempting to collect Haitian debts. The education system was redirected to more Creole areas and instead of book learning concentrated on personal hygiene and farming techniques with American teachers. 10 years after the Americans left, Tuskegee University, a black school in Alabama checked up on how the American schools were doing under Haitian control. They found a return to a French curriculum but unqualified teachers and no books. Interestingly the Education authority actually had gotten written in French a local geography and science textbook.

Things got a little better under the father and son Duvalier regime. Instead of committing money they didn’t have, they simply required the many foreign missionaries to have an affiliated school if they wanted to operate a church. This finally got more children in school. Younger Duvalier also tried instructing  the children in Creole the first year before introducing the French alphabet the second year before teaching in French the third and the last fourth year. This is what was being celebrated on the stamp but ended at the end when the dictator was overthrown.

The interesting thing is that public as well as private local for profit schools charge the student’s parents a fee. For this reason, Haitian schools are jokingly called lottery schools because you buy the ticket and if you beat the odds, your child learns something. A recent President tried to stop the habit at least at the public schools but it did not work. Without the parent paid fee, there was no money coming into the school and it evaporated.

Nice counterfactual. Studying vector calculus in Haiti.

There is a public university in Port au Prince named the State University of Haiti. It got it’s start all the way back in 1860 and according to the brochure it has advanced under a system of trial and error in a backdrop of hardship. Where to sign up?

As part of a system of trial and error, former USA President Bill Clinton hands out nursing degrees at the State University of Haiti.

Well my drink is empty. Perhaps via trial and error we should learn not to overpromise on stamps as they seem so sad later. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Sudan 1962, The World Health Organization would rather fight malaria it’s way, Sudan be dammed

Malaria is a quite deadly disease in the Sudan. One can see then why this stamp expresses the hope that the World Health Organization’s new effort to eradicate the disease will be a great benefit. Now it is my job to figure out how that worked out. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Has we moved into the 1960s, this stamp shows how much hope there was among the newly independent countries. The international bodies were untarnished by colonial grievances but able to direct expertise and resources of the advanced countries into the poor ones in a non threatening way. Unfortunately this period is over with stamps. Now the UN features an individual from the poor land as a symbol of equality and coping with challenges and forgets to even pretend to fix the problems of a place like Sudan.

Todays stamp is issue A23, a 15 millimes stamp issued by independent Sudan on April 7th, 1962. It was a two stamp issue in different denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

90 percent of malaria cases in the Sudan begin with nighttime bites from the female Anopheles mosquito. From the bite, a single celled parasite named plasmodium falciparum is implanted that leads to malaria. Over 40,000 malaria deaths a year plague Sudan, with children and pregnant women hardest hit. This is actually worse that the situation in 1962.

The bug that has to die

This is a strange thing because the WHO efforts to eradicate malaria in the Sudan were largely successful in period. The USA and Japan funded the program that aggressively sprayed insecticides especially along the Nile River so there would be less transmission of the parasite.

Around 1990 there was reorganization that ended the spraying in exchange for a different program that sought to strengthen Sudan’s health infrastructure to lower the death rate among those bitten by the bug. Sudan itself pleaded for the spraying to continue pointing to provinces where spraying had virtually eradicated malaria transmission. The malaria death rate in the Sudan shot to new highs never seen before though Sudan by then was a much more populous country.

In 1998, Sudan itself started a new roll back malaria program hoping to eradicate malaria by 2010. By then the Sudanese health infrastructure tried to use the deaths to justify more health spending from the government. The program had 60% goals on a veriety of fronts. That 60 percent of new transmissions would be in treatment within 8 hours of symptoms. That 60 percent of pregnant women and children under 5 would receive intermittent preventive treatment and be under insecticide spayed bug nets. There would also be a surveillance system nationally to spot severe local outbreaks that would trigger spraying. One can see how this was a formula to spend a large amount of money. It is not so clear how this was an eradication rather than dealing with it strategy. Naturally it failed. Those that promoted the program blame inconsistent government funding and malaria drug treatment switching to more expensive drugs. Meanwhile 40,000 a year continue to die.

WHO’s man on the malaria scene, Spain’s Dr. Pedro Alonso. His scene however is Geneva, not Khartoum

Well my drink is empty. It is hard to blame Sudan for their malaria situation. Somewhere along the line, our experts lost there expertise and were only comfortable doing certain things. If Sudan pays the price, so be it. Come again next Monday for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.