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Building bridges in Denmark, can we still do that and if so, should we

A new bridge opens in 1985, that speeds travel from place to place. It is an early example of a modern style bridge but represents the last gasp of western infrastructure. 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.

I very much like the visuals of this stamp. A new bridge naturally makes one thing of a better future with more possibilities. Something there is less and less of in Western countries where so many stamps have us either looking back or at something that is really only aimed at a few of us. To add to the visuals, the bridge design was of the new variety, with diamond shaped concrete supports and different arrangements of steel cables. The bridge allowed a quick transit between the islands of Falster and Zealand while remaining on the modern highway. This allows quicker trips to and from Copenhagen on the island of Zealand.

Todays stamp is issue A25, a 2.8 Krones stamp issued by the Kingdom of Denmark on May 21st, 1985. It is a single stamp issue celebrating the opening of the  Faro-Falster bridge. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents used.

The bridge on the stamp today was meant to reduce congestion on a much smaller bridge that dated from 1937. The older bridge was kept around for rail traffic. This bridge is now in a poor state and is unsuited for an electrified railway. So there are plans to replace it by another bridge that will incorporate two railway tracks, automobiles and a bike path. I say plans because the process for getting anything new built means that plans take decades to materialize. Funding has to go through a political process that not only includes Denmark but also the European Union. It would be crazy not to apply to them for funding but doing so adds so many years to the project that one wonders if the whole point is to make sure nothing happens.  Even in the best of circumstances coordinating the dictates of two separate bureaucracies must be daunting. The infrequency of actually completing one makes one wonder about the quality of the bridge builders, now that a whole career can be spent on just one project. It does not make for well experienced bridge builders that face new and different challenges every few years.

An example of forever delays is the Fehmarn Belt project that is to take traffic off the bridge on todays stamp by creating a tunnel to connect Zealand to Germany. The project has sat on the shelf so long that the proposed route avoids the old East Germany. Remember Germany was reunited in 1990 and there are no longer travel complications from passing through its Eastern areas. Indeed it is preferable to do so from a distance point of view and also to open up more road and rail travel to Poland. The current in service date of the Fehmarn Belt tunnel is 2028 if everything stays on schedule. To scrap it and start with something more fitting to todays world would add decades to the project. I won’t hold my breath waiting for the stamp celebrating the opening of the Fehmarn Belt Tunnel.

Well my drink is empty and so I will pour another to commiserate with the modern builder. Ideas they still have but the pride that comes from making the dream a reality must have completely faded. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Caracas builds up as President Jimenez flies away.

Oil revenue can do much, most of all raise expectations. Most dictators would prefer a lower bar of success. 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.

Today stamp shows the grand façade of the main Carmelite Post Office in Caracas. The oil revenue was seeing much construction in Caracas of the time and yet the post office building was almost 200 years old. The stamps of the time show a lot of these historic old facades. I suspect that the reason for them was that the government believed Venezuela underpopulated and was trying to attract a new crop of European immigrants. The old world style architecture might help attract them.

The stamp today is issue A102, a 5 Centimos stamp issued by Venezuela on May 14th, 1958. It was part of a six stamp issue in various denominations showing the main post office. In addition to this issue there were three other issues of stamps in the previous 5 years showing the façade of the post office. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. Indeed of the 28 stamps featuring the post office, none are today worth more than $1.50. So the office has lost its once large popularity.

Marcos Jimenez was an army officer that ruled for about 10 years in the 1950s. The oil revenue was really flowing at the time and he started massive public works projects in Caracas. His slogan was sow the oil. The reality was that a lot of debt was being built up and much of it was trying to employ large numbers of Venezuelans to avoid revolution. He also tried to attract European immigrants into the capital in order to benefit from their education and to skew the racial makeup of the country. Jimenez did not succeed in this. Though 2 million immigrants came, most only stayed a few years. He hosted a regular show on Venezuelan TV, where he and a historian friend would talk about historical events

Jimenez was not popular with the elites in the cities, nor with the peasants in the countryside. When a coup was in the offing, Jimenez avoided bloodshed from his side by quickly leaving the country. He settled in the USA until 1963, when he was extradited back to Venezuela to face corruption charges. He sat in jail for 5 years before his sentence was commuted and he was allowed to retire to Spain. He died there in 2001. A later fan of Jimenez was Hugo Chavez. He said Jimenez was one of the best presidents, that people only disliked him  because he was a military man, and Chavez was impressed by all the public works that went on in that era.

The Carmelite Post Office was originally built as a home in the 18th century. It later became the War office and in the 1930s was rebuilt as the main post office with the Gothic façade that appears on the stamp. In 1984, the building was declared a national historic landmark. It still stands but has been dwarfed by the huge buildings that now surround it. The look is a little different today as it has been painted bright colors.

Well my drink is empty and so I will open the discussion in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Azerbaijan, No Soviets to police these borders anymore

The colonial power leaves but after being there so long is there a cohesive country still to reconstruct. 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.

During the cold war era, the Eastern Bloc put out for years well printed large stamps on popular topics. They were readily and cheaply available to worldwide collectors and allowed many stamp collectors to specialize in automobile stamps or in this case cat stamps. Azerbaijan got into this act quickly after independence. In a way that is surprising as the eastern system is after all what they were rebelling against. The fact is though the system was still ingrained in those making decisions. To be frank, these type of stamps are not my thing. I don’t like that most are mint and even if cancelled have never seen an envelope. I also prefer the stamps to be more of a mirror to teach about the place of issue.

The stamp today is issue A55, a 250 Manet stamp issued by Azerbaijan on October 30th, 1995. It was part of a 6 stamp and one souvenir sheet issue displaying domestic cats, in this case a Somali cat. One can see the hyperinflation of early days of independence. The Manet currency was only out for 3 years when this stamp was new. Already the Giapicks, cent equivalent, are gone and the denomination of the stamp is 250 Manets. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 65 cents in it’s cancelled to order state.

Azerbaijan had been taken from the Ottoman Empire by Russia in Czarist times. There was a brief period of independence in the chaos after the 1917 revolution but the new Muslim country was at war with next door Christian Armenia and was unable to resist the Red Army when it came to restore both countries to Soviet aethist Republics.

In the late 80s the Soviet system that had kept the peace began to break down. The locals began to have more contact with their fellow ethnics in neighboring countries and the local Soviet authorities no longer had the stomach to stop them. The border lines of Azerbaijan contained an area called Nagorno-Karabakh that was heavily Armenian in nationality and Christian in religion. As the still Soviet republics both got more autonomy from Moscow, the Armenians gave the vote to Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. The outraged Azerbaijan independence front leaders and they began an anti-Armenian ethnic cleansing pogrom that was quite deadly, the numbers are disputed as usual.

In early 1990 this got the Soviets off the dime and a state of emergency was declared and Soviet troops sent in. The troops were lead by later Russian nationalist leader Alexander Lebed. The Soviets were able to regain control but now Azerbaijan had it’s own massacred in what became known as Black January. At the time of the anti Gorbachev coup, the Azerbaijan Popular Front declared itself independent from Tehran, Iran.

Elections and war with Armenia followed. Gaidar Aliyev was an Azeri who had risen high under the Soviet system but was not allowed to compete allegedly due to age. The Azerbaijan Popular Front had two presidents in short order that fought a losing war with Armenia. APF discredited, Aliyev was then allowed to run and won the Presidency in 1993. He arraigned a ceasefire with Armenia and put his son in charge of the national oil company. When he died he was succeeded by his son who remains in power today. Azerbaijan is again close to Russia.

Well my drink is empty and as I enjoy another I wonder how many former colonies would happily elect an old colonial governor. More than a few I would expect. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Bolivia can only find the gate to the sun on its stamps.

When two sides can’t get along, one side gets repressed. Then the other side gets revenge. then the process repeats. 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.

Todays stamp is not well printed but displays the ancient Gate of the Sun. The archway is carved from a single stone and is a relic of the Tiwanaku Empire that ruled the area around Lake Titicaca from 300 BC to about 1150 AD. The Tiwanaku Empire predated the Incas and far predated Spanish Explorers.

The stamp today is an airmail stamp issue C209, a 5000 Boliviano stamp issued by Bolivia on March 26, 1960. The hyper inflation of the era is reflected in the high denomination of the stamp. An airmail issue from five years before was only 50 Bolivianos. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $2.00 used.

Bolivia has not had much luck with it’s right of center governments. See https://the-philatelist.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=445&action=edit. In the early fifties those on the left were able to unite enough to get a string of their leaders into the presidency. Change was pretty dramatic but the results were not good. The tin mines were a major source of wealth in Bolivia and the new left wing government quickly nationalized them. The labor union that represented the miners was an important part of the coalition. However the output of the mines dropped off and there were constant strikes and the mines were seriously overstaffed.

There was voter and land reform that saw the number of voters go up by five fold as literacy and land owning requirements dropped away. The left assumed  that the reform would bring a large number of new left wing voters. It did this but there was not enough discipline to see that they all voted for the same left wing party. Elections inevitably left the leading candidate with less than 50 percent of the vote leaving the decision to the legislature and by extension the party bosses.

The military, a right wing organization was heavily shrunk and purged. This left the government unable to disarm various peasant militias that though they were sometimes allies, were a huge challenge to achieving stability. Shrinking the military also angered the USA, whose aid was 20 percent of the national budget. All these challenges lead to hyper inflation, which turned the middle class rightward politically. The left was further divided as to whether the proper model for Bolivia was the one left party state of Mexico or a more pure form of socialism. Soon enough the left was splintered enough that when the next military coup came in 1969, it had support of many on the left.

The gate of the sun was built by the Tiwanaku empire that controlled much of Bolivia and some of Peru. It was not conquered so much as died out. A drought lead to a famine  that spelled the end of the people. The relics of the empire were discovered by the Spanish who first wrote of them. They were studied by some of the great archeologists of the 19th century. The site of the gate of the sun is a UNESCO world heritage site. The foreign archeologists have left the site after Bolivia worried that the site was not being properly respected by the team from Harvard that included many students. Bolivia then stepped up its own work at the site but then stopped when UNESCO protested that their changes were not historically accurate.

The study of the gate of the sun makes a point about the failure of a society. Here is hoping that current Bolivian society  does not have the same outcome. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Burma, after breaking from India, Britain, and Japan, forms a union to try to stand together

Colonial era borders often do not leave coherent borders. So when independence comes, a way to stand together must be found. 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.

Todays stamp is quite small and requires some study to follow. That does not make it a bad stamp. What I like is how different it was from the colonial period. The teakwood harvesting shown as a common feel that just would not be present in a colonial issue. The first governments of Burma contained many leaders of the independence movement that started as a peasant tax revolt. Coopted later of course but even into ruling, the movement at least was paying lip service to the common Burmese. I like that.

Todays stamp is issue A16, a 4 Anna stamp issued by the Union  of Burma on January 4th, 1949. It displays teak harvesting and was part of a 16 stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

The territory of Burma was broken off from British India in 1937. This was viewed suspiciously in Burma. Although the bulk of the people were neither Hindu nor Muslim, it was thought that India was on the fast track to independence and this would slow it down. The British introduced a measure of self government but all the leaders it put in place were for independence and willing to collaborate with the Japanese to get it. Three different prime ministers of the shadow self government spent time in British prisons for collaborating with the Japanese in the period leading up to and during World War II.

The Japanese occupied Burma in World War II and Aung San, father of the current Myanmar leader, formed an army of the puppet regime. As the tide of war changed, Aung Sung made contact with Britain in India and changed sides ending the Japanese occupation. He was named prime minister and conducted the negotiations that lead to independence. However left out was former prime minister U Saw. U Saw had been caught meeting with Japanese in pre Pacific war London. He was detained in Uganda for the rest of the war, but post war was back in Burma seeking power. His poor man’s party did badly in elections but then he attempted a coup and assassinated Aung Sung in 1947. U Saw was hung for his part in the coup. A rough place and remains one as there are many ethnic and religious minorities that do not feel much connection to the government of the majority. The majority is itself divided between leftists like Aung San’s daughter and conservatives who seek to impose unity from above, often by force.

Teak is a hardwood that is uniquely suited to maritime uses as it is naturally resistant to water. The largest teak forests in the world are still today located in Myanmar.

Well my drink is empty and so I will open the discussion in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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As the British exit the Bahamas they build wellfare centers for the poor while the mob concentrates on drugs and gambling for the rich

Transition a colony to self rule is complicated. A colonial power wants to leave but doesn’t want things to just fall apart. 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.

A late issue in the colonial period of the Bahamas. So another Queen Elizabeth stamp during a victory lap. See this https://the-philatelist.com/2018/02/12/british-guiana-going-independant-means-choosing-between-the-indians-and-the-africans/ . What is nice here is the low denominations show things Britain has done for the people of the Bahamas. The low denominations being more likely to be used for bulk postage. So here we show the infant welfare center that was a gift of Britain, In the same set we have high denominations showing Paradise Beach and water skiing. The higher denominations are more of interest to stamp collectors and make the point of Bahamas as a nice place to visit. See also https://the-philatelist.com/2018/02/07/the-british-in-cyprus-again-having-to-stand-between/

The stamp today is issue A17, a half penny issued by the Crown Colony of the Bahamas on January 1st, 1954. The stamp was part of a 16 stamp issue of various denominations celebrating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The stamp had a long life. In 1964, the issue was renewed with an overprint announcing the new constitution of 1964. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1.90 used. Interestingly the mint version is only worth 25 cents.

Bahamas is very close to the USA so despite being a British colony gets enmeshed in USA issues. Great Britain freed slaves in the empire 30 years before the USA. So when slave ships ended up in Bahamas the slaves on board  were given their freedom. The USA then made a claim to Great Britain, which was paid, for the value of the freed slaves. During the American civil war, blockade running to the South was a lucrative if dangerous undertaking.

When nearby Cuba went socialist and closed the casinos. The American mob figures involved in Cuba became interested in getting new casinos built in the Bahamas. In doing so, they tarnished as bribe takers the last colonial era premier and the first independent prime minister with the stench of the bribes. In the eighties, 90 % of the cocaine entering the USA passed through the Bahamas thanks to bribes paid to Lyndon Pindling, the long serving first Prime Minister. I should say Sir Lyndon, as the Queen knighted him as well as the also corrupt predecessor Sir Roland Symonette. Why not hand out undeserved titles if it gets  you out the door quicker?

Tourism and banking eventually raised the standards of life in the Bahamas. Throughout it has been plagued by pirates and crooks. A problem that the British did mot solve and more importantly the Bahamians themselves have yet to get a grip on.

Well, my drink is empty and so I will open the discussion in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

 

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Ireland 1929, the Free State remembers the Emancipator

When a people are different from their outside rulers, the desire for independence grows. How much independence and the method to get it are issues to be dealt with. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take tour first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Todays stamp was an early issue of the Irish Free State. The remarkable thing to a non Irish nearly a hundred years later is how Catholic the stamps are. The vast majority of Irish were Catholic, and Catholics felt repressed by a Britain that of course had its own doctrinally similar Church of England. Early stamps of a free state are a way to define who you are as a nation. To Ireland of the 20s, that meant a very conservative form of Catholicism. To foreign eyes, one may wonder if the Irish were trading some other freedoms for this religious purity.

The stamp today is issue A5, a 2 pence stamp issued by the Irish Free State on June 22nd, 1929. It marks the century of Catholic Emancipation in Ireland the great accomplishment of Daniel O’Connell, who is featured on the three stamps of the issue. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 55 cents used.

Daniel O’Connell was born in 1775 to a formerly wealthy Catholic family. Ireland was ruled by neighboring Great Britain and there was much turmoil between the Protestant British and the Catholic Irish. From a still wealthy uncle Daniel was able to receive a first rate education and was received into the legal bar. As a condition of his educational help, his uncle required that Daniel not participate in any violent uprisings against Britain. This meant that Daniel’s reform efforts were within the system of British law.

O’Connell ran for the British Parliament and won a seat. At the time the oath sworn by new members included fealty to the Church of  England. Up to then this had kept the Irish delegation Protestant and thereby unrepresentative. When the British realized that the failure to seat O’Connell would likely lead to rebellion in Ireland, the law was changed. The Catholic Emancipation Act allowed them to omit that part of the oath and be seated in Parliament. King George IV only signed the new law after Lord Wellington threatened to resign if he did not. King George quipped that Lord Wellington was king of England, O’Connell was king of Ireland and he himself was only dean of Oxford.

At home in Ireland, O’Connell was often at odds with both militants and with those more supportive of the Protestants. After criticizing a company in Ireland considered a center of Protestant power., O’Connell was challenged to a duel. He killed the man and was forever sorry as it had left the man’s family destitute. His offer to support the widow was refused but he was allowed to support the man’s daughter, which he did for the next 30 years.

O’Connell helped his son acquire a brewery that put out a beer bearing his name. At the time Arthur Guinness was both a political rival as well as a maker of a rival beer. As such, ones beer choice in Ireland often also spoke to one’s politics. O’Connell died in 1847.

The Irish Free State was pretty close to O’Connell’s ideal for Ireland’s future. Some thought it not independent enough and one of the political parties pushed for a full break from England and leaving the Commonwealth. Ireland proved just how free it was when this party was allowed to take power after winning an election. Ireland ended the free state in 1937, sat out World War II, and left the Commonwealth in 1949.

Well my drink is empty so I will pour another and toast Mr. O’Connell,  but with a glass of Guinness, as I am somewhat to his right  politically. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Russia 1917, war, chaos, revolutions, price inflation and stamp value deflation

With a long war change was in the air and a provisional government must decide what to keep. Keeping the wrong things lead to further revolution. 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 research on this stamp started out very hopefully. Three and a half rubles was a lot of money at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was an oversized stamp that was well printed. The stamp first came out in 1884. The mint version of that one is $1200. That is very exciting but I better check for a cheaper variation. Sure enough, there is a 1902 version with a slight difference worth $55. Still pretty good but the color is wrong as the early versions of the stamp seem to all be black and grey. Oh no, I better look ahead to see if there was an even later version. I was still confident that it was czarist with the imperial eagle on it. Well not exactly, In 1917, there was a provisional Russian government after the last Czar abdicated, but before the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917. This government had time to issue another new version of the stamp in green and maroon. War and revolution had taken their toll on the economy, and 3.5 rubles wasn’t what it used to be. The 1917 version of the 1884 stamp is only worth $1.10.

World War I went very badly for the already shaky government of Czar Nicholas II. The poor performance and very high casualty rate were blamed personally on the Czar. Since Czarina Alexandra was German and was a patron of a strange mystic named Rasputin, it made the Czar seem aloof, weak and uncaring of the suffering the war was causing. In March 1917 the Czar abdicated and was sent to internal exile. A provisional government was set up under socialist Alexander Kerensky.

Much to the surprise of many of the supporters of the revolution, Kerensky wanted to continue the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary. He thought there was still a duty to Russia’s allies and feared the economic consequence of the cutoff of their support to Russia. Kerensky launched a new offensive against Germany that went very badly. He had fired many of the Czar era officers and nobody was really in charge. The officers mocked Kerensky as a persuader and chief rather than a commander and chief. More than 2 million Russian soldiers deserted.

Kerensky believed he had no enemies on the left of him politically and concentrated on crushing Czarist opposition. After all Kerensky and the Bolshevik leader Lenin were old family friends. The Bolsheviks were not in agreement with Kerensky and sensed his weakness.

1917 saw a second revolution in October. The only military unit in the capital of Saint Petersburg that was willing to fight for the provisional government was a company of a woman’s unit and their resistance was wiped out in a day. Kerensky’s family faired better than the Czars as he was able to escape first to France and later to America. The newly declared Union of Soviet Socialist Republic finally let this stamp with it’s imperial eagle be retired, having been issued in various forms for 33 years.

Well my drink is empty and so I will open the conversation in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Peak Japan

Imagine trying to collect Asian stamps as a western collector in the 19th century. There is a taste of that in this 21st century stamp from Japan. 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 colors on this stamp are incredibly well executed. That is not to say they are very realistic. Instead the colors have been picked to be so subdued as to add a feeling of calm and contentment. More so than the more vivid colors of reality. This is a common theme in Japanese stamps from the early days. In the more modern offerings there is more of a reflective mood. The stamp offerings are often large sheets of different stamps dedicated to home towns or songs. Not the big cities where people still live and not songs that sit atop the pop chart. Rather an idealized reflection on a Japan that once was.

Japan is no longer a hard charging goal oriented country of the twentieth century. Rather it is an older place,still mostly inward looking, and very well off. This is reflected in the stamp offerings, that are clearly directed almost entirely to local collectors.

So where does that leave the western stamp collector. Well, if ones favorite part of collecting is art on stamps. Japan will have plenty of stamps for you. They are reasonably priced with comparatively few of them exceeding a dollar in value.

To a more general collector there are some basic issues that just do not come up as often with other countries offerings. The Japanese script, with no date of issue leave basic identification very difficult. To add to this, from the early 1990s on to present day there has been the problem of inflation. or rather the lack of it as Japan as been fighting a never ending battle with deflation since the Japanese stock market bubble burst in 1989. This takes away a method of time dating a stamp that works with most every country including pre 1989 Japan. Over time the denominations on stamps go up. So the newer the higher the denomination. Occasionally there is a big devaluation or a new currency to shake things up but those can be learned easily. On todays Japan stamp, the denomination is 80 yen. The has been the defacto postal rate for nearly 30 years. There were even a few earlier than that stamps with that denomination. That means that the denomination can only narrow the stamp down to a 30 year window. Not much help.

At the same time the postal issues have shifted at a few on going themes of a better yesterday that have new annual releases. An example of this is the hometown series that are now in the hundreds of individual stamps issued over many years. All with 80 yen denominations and descriptions only in Japanese characters.

Another factor making it difficult is the tendency not to show landmarks from the town but rather an idealized nature scene as with todays stamp. Very pretty and might mean something to one from that hometown, but not  much for anyone else.

Well my drink is empty so I will open the conversation in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

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Iraq 1923, They don’t like the Ottomans or the British, lets see how they like the Hashemites

When an empire fades there is a vacuum. 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 stamp today displays an exotic picture of an ancient Sunni Mosque. The other stamps of the issue show other religious sites from the various religions in Iraq. The stamp displays the problem facing the British as it did the Ottomans before them and the Americans much later. The country is just not a cohesive place  that lends itself to becoming a successful country.

The stamp today is issue A1, a one half anna stamp that was the first issue of a separate Iraq. There are earlier Baghdad overprints from the Ottoman era. It was part of a thirteen stamp issue of various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. The 10 Rupee stamp featuring the Golden Shia Mosque at Kadhimain is worth $67 mint.

Iraq broke off from the retreating Ottoman Empire after World War I. When it became clear that there was going to be a British mandate to run Iraq, there was a rebellion. The head Shia Ayatollah issued a jihad forbidding Iraqis from working for the British and to press Iraqi demands peacefully at first. The rebellion was widespread and not just Shia. The British were able to put down the rebellion at high cost through the use of aerial bombing. The cost was such that Britain decided that they did not want to administer Iraq after all. At T. E. Lawrence’s suggestion, a Hashemite leader he had worked with in World War I was brought in and named King. He had previously served briefly as King of Syria until the French Colonial forces had removed and exiled him. He was originally from Mecca and could trace his ancestry to the Prophet Mohammed.

This choice was also complicated. King Faisal I was virtually unknown in Iraq and a Sunni. The Sunnis were a minority in Iraq and since the Ottoman administration was also Sunni, the majority Shia felt disadvantaged. Though Arab, the Shia also looked more to Iran for leadership and support. Faisal tried to overcome this by trying to appeal to a more pan Arab spirit. His brother was after all the ruler of neighboring Transjordan and covetous of Syria, Lebanon, Arabia, and Palestine. The choice of  Faisal let the British step back from the mandate while still keeping it’s interest in the British owned Iraqi oil company.

The Hashemite’s rule was not successful personally for them. The three Hashemite rulers of Iraq were all murdered. Faisal I was murdered by arsenic poisoning in 1933. His young son King Ghazi died in a mysterious car wreck in 1939. He had been a disappointment to the British as he was openly pro axis and said so on his radio show. There was also a sexual scandal with a black servant boy dying of a gunshot wound in the Royal chamber. The King claimed the boy died after forgetting to remove his gun before laying down for siesta. In 1958, a still only 23 year old King Faisal II ordered the army to deploy to Jordan to support his ally King Hussein of Jordan. Instead they marched to the palace and lead a coup. The King’s whole family was shot after surrendering to the coup plotters. The King survived the shooting but the King died later in hospital. The crown price and prime minister’s dead bodies were dragged through the streets and then hung from a lamp post.

That was the end of the Hashemites in Iraq but the tradition continued with republic. The coup plotter served five years as prime minister before another coup where he was shot and then hung from a lamp post. Remember also Sadam Hussein being hung after being forced from office and found hiding in a sewer pipe. At least he was given a trial. Progress?

Well my drink is empty and so I will open the conversation in the below comment section. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.