Weeks #2017.25 on SébPhilatélie

What was on this blog in French late June?

Monday 19 June: Satirical responses to Donald Trump Presidency.
How to protest against Donald Trump (and the most conservative members of the Republican Party) and convince opponents to react and GOP supporters to think again?

The label shown as example by its creator (postalprotest.com).

Three solutions happened late June 2017: TV channel Comedy Central's satirical The Daily Show entertained New Yorkers with a temporary museum between Friday 16 to Sunday 18, just opposite the famous Trump Tower:

The Donald J. Trump

Presidential Twitter Library

that still can be visited on this 3D website.

Even  former President of Mexico, Vicente Fox, decided to go satirical and has been filming youTube videos to educate his presidential colleague beyond the wall how to behave as a chief of State: 24 May, 7 June and 28 June. Enjoy.

Finally a simple citizen created a website, postalprotest.com, to sell cinderella stamps with the likeness of Trump and classic U.S. stamp ornament, valued "0 cents" that English-speaking members of StampBoards forum read "no sense". The designer tells that his inspiration came from browsing his late father's collection.

Wednesday 21 June: New postage marks and service for periodics in France.
Not very popular among collectors, but still postal marks and services: the postage paid marks directly printed on envelopes or plastic bags wrapping printed newspapers, magazines and other periodicals sent to subscribers.

New (left) and former (right) marks for the press sent through the postal system (screen capture of La Poste's dedicated website).

With a video game bimonthly - and ironical - magazine issue of mid-June, I discover the new marks by the French post. The illustration above present more understantable service mark: P1 for the uurgent press of the day, and so on P2, P4 and P7 depending on the need for the publication to be delivered with haste and depending on the cost.

The four new logotype replaced the three colour former: red, black and green.

The "Publissimo" (Pmo) marks are updated to in the same way and are for periodical publications that are not members of the Press Commission that negociates with State the help of press diffusion.

Thursday 22 June: New definitive series in Ukraine.
Betweenn Saturday 10 and Tuesday 20 June Ukrposhta issued the first eight stamps of Ukraine's ninth definitive series: Arms of municipalities, towns and villages.

I thank the blog Мой почтовый мир / My postal world for his webmaster's work to publish the new issues of Ukraine (among others).

Ukrposhta published an envelope for the new series' first day of use with a map locating the cities/villages and their oblasts (via My postal world, 10 June 2017).

Designed by Natalia Andreichenko following the recommendations of Andrey Grechilo, President of the Ukrainian Heraldry Society, the 8 stamps illustrate the arms of Chop (Zakarpattya), Klesov (Rivne), Nizhyn (Chernigov), Shatsk (Volyn), and villages of Marinin (Rivne) et Parutino (Mykolaiv).

Six here because the last two are remarkable because of the relations between Ukraine and Russia. But first, here is a list of the letter codes for the postal rates:

From a mail by Ukrposhta (via StampBoards).

The two stamps are from territories currently disputed between Ukraine on one side, Russia or Russian-[choose your opinion]ed independentist groups on the other.

Yalta, first stamp issued in this series, "V" for the interior basic letter (via My postal world, 10 June 2017).

Since the events of early 2014 the "Euromaidan protest"-inspired governments of Ukraine are facing the de facto integration of Crimea and Sebastopol into the Federation of Russia. So the issue of the Yalta stamp... The stamp will appear on many envelopes inside the country, the message is clear: Crimea is Ukrainian.

A traditional role for a stamp: to reinforce sovereignty... as Russia has been doing with stamps about Crimean places since 2014.

Arms of Yenakiieve (via My postal world, 21 June 2017).

The other troublesome stamp was issued Tuesday 20 June bearing the arms of Yenakiieve, in the oblast of Donetsk and the industrial region of Donbass, où deux groupes pro-russes revendiquent l'indépendance et sont en guerre civile contre l'État ukrainien.

Since the first fights in April 2014 this city is under the control of the separatists of the People's Republic of Donetsk while part of its suburbs were retaken by the Ukrainian army.

One question: how is the postal system working in Donbass?

Saturday 24 June: Even video games heroes receive postcards.
Just Cause 3 isn't an intellectual reflective video games - sure those kinds of games exist: read Canard PC - but the Swedish studio Avalanche allows its hero the capacity to read.

Introductive video of the game - the only seconds without gun and cannon shots? - during which the hero reads again his cousin's postcard that decided him to go back to its archipelago country in the Mediterranean Sea (via Fl0GaminG video on youTube, 5 December 2015).

In the Just Cause series the player must violently disrupt a dictatorial régime by killing soldiers, destroying strategic and military assets. When enough "chaos points" have been earned, he/she can perform special missions to advance into the story and towards the dismissal of the leader.

The third episode is special because the Agency accepts to send the hero to his country of birth, a Mediterranean archipelago under a military ruler, inspired by interwar fascism and many regional (both European and Arabic) military dictators.

How did he know he should come back and fight?

His cousin sent him a postcard with the dictator as main illustration of both the card and the postage stamp.