Have you been wondering what's happening in Asgardia and feeling it is difficult to find information about what is going on in our Nation?

To step up and take action and help all and everyone who's interested in keeping up, I've decided to create an independent and non-official News Website about the Space Nation!

It is coming up soon and if you want to be informed first hand about it, I invite you to follow this link: http://bit.ly/AsgardianNews

The website is "under construction" and I assure you, I'm working on it day and night!

Along with an interview of our Asgardian Member of Parliament Jonathan Tate , the Director of the Space Guard Centre in Wales, the article comes in the aftermath of NASA reporting last week that a "space rock, several metres in size, exploded about 16 miles above the earth’s surface with ten times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb."

Read the article here: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1104420/end-of-world-extinction-level-event-comet-asteroid

Decree 2 (click here) from March 6, 2017 gave birth to our Asgardian Calendar (click here) . It is a solar calendar, composed of 13 months of 28 days each which equals to 13x28= 364 leaving the last day to be called " YEAR DAY " .

Article 3 of Decree 2 states:
« The final day of the year, which coincides with December 31, 2017 in the Gregorian calendar, does not have a date and does not belong to any month. It is called “Year Day”. »

It is indeed a day to be celebrated as a special day for all Asgardians!

Together with our "Asgardian National Unity Day" (June 18th, Gregorian Calendar) and with "Asgardia's Birthday" (October 12th, Gregorian Calendar), " Year Day " is an equally important National Holiday for Asgardians!

This year, in the Asgardian community of Kuala Lumpur, we improvised a last minute meeting for the occasion, coordinating with WhatsApp and Facebook, just taking a one hour pause from our very busy schedules of the last hours of the year.
Some of us went fighting the heavy trafic, swimming in the crowds in the local public transport to finally make it to the most emblematic place of the city: KLCC, just before the fireworks show began, just to take a picture that will remain in the historical archives of our Nation, sharing a moment together!
Yes, despite the thousands of people around us waiting for the show to start, we managed to unfold our Asgardian banner and got a few pictures with it before it was time to say goodbye and all go back to our families and friends in preparation for the last evening of the year 2018 and, for us Asgardians, the last day of Year 0002 !!

HAPPY YEAR DAY EVERYONE!!

And you Asgardian friends reading this blog post, how did you celebrate Year Day 0002?

On December 17th, our acting Prime Minister, Mrs. Ana Mercedes Diaz, issued Directive No.1 , clarifying many aspects around the “Resident status” after the Citizenship Law that was first voted by Parliament in June 2018 and as it applies to us Asgardians at this time .

Despite the clarifications given, the debate on the “Asgardia General Official” Facebook group still remains heated up .
As throughout my life, I’ve had some experience about “residency” in various places on Earth, I felt I could share to help understand the process in which we currently are together.

My experience “abroad”

I have traveled quite a bit. As of today, December 19th 2018, I have so far visited over a hundred countries and autonomous territories, 104 to be precise. I have spent extended periods of time in a few of these countries (there are 11 countries where I’ve spent between a month and up to several years) and I have worked locally in several countries for shorter or longer periods of time (9 countries where I have received a local salary).

I consider myself to be “a World Citizen” even though in reality, like everyone else on Earth, I am bound to the citizenship laws of my country of birth, France, and to the relative “power” of the passport I receive from it as a French citizen.

Applying for a permit

As you can imagine, over the years, I have had experience with various immigration authorities, visited many embassies, submitted lots of applications and filled up many many forms either in order to be a “tourist“ and simply visit a country or in order to become a “resident” when I intended to stay and work abroad.

Being a tourist

At times, just to be a temporary tourist and be allowed to travel freely in a land, you have to buy what is called “a visa”. It is usually a sticker or a stamp placed in your passport, usually giving you the legal right to enter, to travel within and to remain in a given country for a predetermined time. So far, the most money I have had to spend for a visa to visit a country was well over 100€ for a 30 day visit (that was actually Russia). But that was not my most expensive visa: I once had to pay a 5-day visa for 50$US!! (that one was for Iran)

So, just visiting a country, not even staying, yes, that can be costly.

Becoming a resident

Now, what does a “Residence permit” do? In most countries, a “Residence permit” gives legal rights to live in a chosen country for an extended period of time (usually a year). It is also generally affixed in one’s passport, and often gives the possibility to legally work in that country. Other special permits exist for different situations such as “Student permits” or “Volunteering permits” for example.

The price and administrative procedures to follow in order to obtain legally a “Residence permit” are then entirely different from the process to follow when you apply to enter a country for a visit as a tourist. For example, for French passport holders willing to relocate to Canada, the process to obtain Residency usually take about a year, submitting various papers, degrees/diplomas, going through interviews, etc. and the fee just for the application (whether it is successful or not) is well over the 100€ fee that is asked in Asgardia.

What about gaining citizenship?

There are different ways to become the Citizen of a foreign country. Here are the main and most common ones:

1) Paying a substantial fee

Most countries offer different ways to gain Citizenship. Some offer Citizenship for a substantial payment/investment of several hundreds of thousands of euros, even millions in some cases, to acquire Citizenship which then gives access to a passport and the possibility to enjoy full rights as any other regular Citizen of the country.

2) By first being a Resident for a number of years

Some countries require that you first apply for temporary residency (through a “Residence permit”). Then, after remaining a resident for a few years, the candidate must apply for permanent residency (through a “Permanent Resident permit”). Only then, ultimately, the candidate can apply for Citizenship in a process called “naturalisation”. This process is in place in countries such as Australia or New Zealand for example. Usually, attached to that process is a civic training followed by an interview led in the official language of the country, at times even accompanied by a language test and a questionnaire to make sure that the candidate knows their way around the culture and the language of the country of which they want to become Citizens. That’s the case for France, as an example.

3) Through marriage

Marriage is another path to become a Citizen of another country. Laws greatly vary from country to country to make sure the marriage is real and not a “marriage of convenience” or “sham marriage”. Some countries, such as France, don’t automatically grant citizenship to a Foreigner who marries a French person. That foreign person must wait five years, learn French language, sit for citizenship classes and then pass a written test and/or an interview…

What about dual Citizenship?

Dual Citizenship is when you have a second nationality. Please note that some countries don’t recognise dual citizenship (China, Malaysia just to name a few) and that if you were born in these countries and you happen to gain Citizenship in another country, you de facto lose your original Citizenship with all the rights and privileges attached to it (such as the right to access free public services, healthcare, education, right to work in the country, to marry in the country, etc.).

But fortunately, this doesn’t concern us in Asgardia, as we will see later, in an upcoming post.

What about Asgardia’s Citizens?

Because at this time, Asgardia is still not a full-fledged Nation, there are no Citizens in Asgardia . [EDIT: more to come on that in my next blog post]
In the process of building the Nation, before we had laws defining what “Asgardian Citizenship” really means, the term “Citizen” has been used at times, but never as a defined status referring to existing people. To the extend of my research, understanding and knowledge, if such a term was used, it was always referring to the upcoming concept and status of a Citizen, now defined in the Law of Citizenship. That means that at no point in the history of Asgardia anyone was called or even considered officially a Citizen. We were all rather "Citizens to be".

Now that the Citizenship Law has been voted, assented by our Head of Nation and further amended by our Parliament, we now have a clearer route map, a better understanding of the steps to come in the process of acquiring that status of “Citizen”.

No easy way to become a Citizen

As we have seen in the many examples shared above, there is no easy way for someone to become a Citizen of any Nation. To acquire Citizenship in Cyprus without residence, among other specific conditions, the minimum fee to invest is 300,000€, and it is one of the lowest in Europe!

Just like here in Malaysia, where I am glad to be a Resident and enjoy free access to the land, the culture and the food, there is a fee to be paid to acquire my permit.
However, being a Resident here in Malaysia doesn't actually give me any advantage I wouldn't already have if I would only be here as a tourist. Except the fact that a French tourist can only stay a maximum of 90 days and then has to leave the country while me, as a Resident permit holder, I can stay for the whole year!
Maybe that is my special advantage.
If I ever wanted to become a Citizen of Malaysia, I could then vote, I could also acquire property in a much easier way than it is for me now as a foreigner, get access to the public healthcare system, etc.
But to do so, I would have to show the proof that I have lived here 10 years under a Permanent Residence Permit, pay a fee and also work a bit on my Malay language since... there is a language proficiency test to pass!

CONCLUSION

After two years of existence, Asgardia is now offering the people who have followed and supported the developments of the Nation an opportunity to acquire the transitional status of “Resident”, which, as it is for many Nations, is a first step towards acquiring Asgardian Citizenship.

In the light of the above, I now let you be the judge whether paying this “100€ Citizenship fee” to become an Asgardian Resident to be on track to become a Citizen is worth your while or not.
We are building the first Space Nation, we have never done that before, in fact, no one has ever done it before. True, it is not a straightforward road because adjustments are likely to be needed to keep the vision of “One Humanity, One Unity” alive and at the same time to move forward building our Government and our economy.

Now that you know, will you take your steps and become a Resident?

At an average cruise speed of 8 kilometres per second (28.800 kilometres per hour), one can imagine it is not always easy for the occupants of the International Space Station to identify the part of the world they are right above at a given time. After all, just as our Head of Nation Dr. Ashurbeyli mentioned several times, from space, one cannot see the manmade arbitrary borders that define Earthly states and nations!

The picture above was taken on Saturday, February 11th 2012 during Expedition 30 , under the Command of Dan Burbank (NASA). It was Burbank's third spaceflight and at the time the picture was taken, another Astronaut, Don Pettit, three Cosmonauts, Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoli Ivanishin, and Oleg Kononenko and a Spationaut, André Kuipers, were under his command.
Up to this day, it is not known who exactly of the six men took the picture.
The week the picture was taken was an important week for the crew of the ISS: the preparation and training for the first EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity, better known as "Space Walk") of the year 2012, scheduled to take place five days later. A few hours after the picture was taken, the six men went to sleep. Little did they know that their sleep that night would be shorten by six hours!!

The crew was woken up by an emergency wake up on Sunday, February 12th around midnight (UTC), and found that the Station had suffered a temporary loss of power during their sleep, due to the failure of one of its power channels!
With the participation of everyone onboard and the help and guidance of organised teams on the ground, the re-powering of the ISS Systems was able to be established by 8pm (UTC) that same day. It took almost a full day to verify the integrity of all parts of the Station, the safety of the crew and the stability of the Station. By Monday 13th, all necessary resetting and controls had been operated and the crew was able to go back to its scheduled routine.

Usually, for the occupants of the Space Station, Sunday schedules are organised to be as "off duty days", meaning that they only have essential science and usual maintenance items to perform to keep things to a minimum. But the emergency nature of the situation and the processes necessary for the reset and restauration of the Station made that this Sunday ended up being a busy day... with not much rest!
Fortunately, the EVA that was originally scheduled to take place on Thursday, February 16th, thanks to the power loss to have occurred on the Sunday and not during the busy week schedule, didn't need to be postponed. That first Space Walk of 2012 (the only one of Expedition 30) lasted 6 hours 15 minutes and was led by Shkaplerov and Kononenko mainly to prepare for the undocking of the Pirs docking compartment relocating the Strela 1 Equipment Crane module to the Mini-Research Module 2 . There was also the retrieval of an experiment module which exposed materials to the space environment, while another experiment ( the Vynoslivost Sample Experiment ), was installed on handrails on MRM2. As there was not enough time to install the two units for the "TEST experiment", just one unit was installed before time for the EVA ran out. The scheduled task to install five shields on Zvezda to protect it from micrometeoroid debris was also cancelled and was rescheduled to be done during the following EVA, scheduled to take place in August that same year, during Expedition 32 .
This event that occurred hours after the picture was taken, is what is called a "Power-On Reset". It occurs occasionally aboard ISS and is considered a random event possibly associated with radiation. Prior to that event, the Station had previously suffered two such PORs, one on February 11th 2007 (during Expedition 14 ) and the other on November 3rd, 2008 ( Expedition 18 ).

What an adventure!
The photo of the unknown city that had just been taken before the whole POR incident was brought back to Earth and posted on the ESA website three years later, on 13th of March 2014, under the Space Station image tag #ISS030-E-85887.

It is with the help of the fans of the ESA website that the city was actually identified as being Kuala Lumpur, the city I have adopted!

Dear Asgardian Followers from the great city of Kuala Lumpur, from the Wilayah Persekutuan and from the Klang Valley!

First as a tourist and for business, I have been coming and passing through Kuala Lumpur off and on for the last 20 years for well over 60 trips! So when I had to relocate with my family after having lived 8 years in China, it just made sense to choose to come and live in the muddy confluence! :-)
I have now been a KL resident for the last two years and have been enjoying my everyday life here, the different parts of our city, its culture and of course, going mamak with friends!

I own two businesses and mostly work online which allows me to dedicate time to meaningful activities with my wife and friends. I’ve lived in the Cheras area, in Bangsar and I am now relocated in Wangsa Maju.

I’ve been involved in the building of our Nation for over a year now. I’ve organised the first meeting of Asgardian Followers in Kuala Lumpur to celebrate the First Anniversary of the Founding of our Nation last October (see the pictures in my blog post http://bit.ly/AsgardiaKL1) and have had the chance and the honour to be in Vienna at the end of June to witness the Inauguration of our Head of Nation Dr. Igor Ashurbeyli and meet all the Members of Parliament who were present at the opening of the First Parliamentary Session.

For the last few months, I have been in regular contact with the Administration of Dr. Ashurbeyli and also with several of our local Parliamentary Representatives. As such, I believe to be a good candidate able to foster the progress and development of our Nation in its current plans in Kuala Lumpur and its region, in the whole of Malaysia and in the wider South East Asia.

The role of a Mayor at this time for Asgardia is to bring our Nation from its present virtual and online state to the birth and sustaining of a thriving community life at the grassroots level in a given earthly locality.

At this time, we are just users of a website, part of an online group of people believing in the future of humanity as being beyond this terrestrial existence, in the immensity of space and getting ready to launch its conquest which is the reason why, for most of us, we chose to join the Space Kingdom of Asgardia in the first place and accepted its Constitution!

But it is now time to transition from being an online community to becoming a real life Nation, going from the virtual to the reality of our Malaysian lives, greeting and meeting each other in our beautiful city of KL which, I believe, can become a beacon of light in the development of our Nation for the whole of South East Asia with its diversity and cultural wealth, an example of success for the whole of Asgardia.

Together, let’s make Kuala Lumpur the best example of what « One Humanity, One Unity » truly means!

I stand here, as a candidate for the position of Asgardian Mayor of the city of Kuala Lumpur, to help you become a full Citizen of Asgardia and obtain your first Asgardian ID, to promote our Nation’s interests to the wider Malaysian community by connecting with companies, local businesses, the Media and the Press to render Asgardia more visible, and reaching out to the bright young minds in our local educational institutions and invite them to join us in the building of our spacefaring Nation.

Thank you for your support and for your willingness to participate in these mayoral elections!

[P.S.: a Mayor cannot do his or her work on their own, it takes a solid team of people both in the forefront alongside the Mayor but also some others helping in the background. If you believe you have what it takes to join my team as a volunteer, please contact me privately through your asgardia.space profile, adding me as a friend there and sending me a private message sharing your experience and your motivation.]

Here is the link to the map of the Earthly Cities having an Asgardian "Mayor": https://www.zeemaps.com/map?group=3214775

This map was made according to the list of Mayors attached to Decree 26 ( http://bit.ly/Decree26-list ).

Remember to vote for your favorite Mayoral candidate in your own city!
To do so:
1) Follow this link: https://asgardia.space/en/mayoral-elections/around-the-world
2) Under the heading "Election Status", click on "Your electoral region"
3) Click on the profile(s) of the candidate(s) in your electoral region to read their platforms
4) If there are no candidates: apply to become Mayor yourself!!

October 12th came again in Kuala Lumpur! Last year four followers had managed to gather together to celebrate and this year, it suddenly was eight of us getting together to celebrate Asgardia’s second Birthday!! Yes, already two years!

It was in Paris that on October 12th 2016, that the scientist, businessman and philanthropist Dr. Igor Ashurbeyli announced the founding of Asgardia the Space Nation. Well, two years down the road , Asgardia not only has a Constitution, a democratically elected Head of Nation, a flag, a national anthem and a coat of arms, Asgardia now has a satellite  Asgardia1 representing its first territory in space, a fully functioning elected Parliament of currently 127 Members that has already held two sessions, one physical and one virtual , has voted on several laws and has finalised its 12 permanent parliamentary committees ; a Prime Minister who is currently forming her first Cabinet of Ministers to be announced by the end of this year 2018 ; a Supreme Justice appointed during the First Parliamentary session of Parliament that was held in Vienna in June 2018, and in a few hours, Asgardian Mayors from various cities all around the globe establishing Asgardia's official presence in 44 earthly cities around the globe!

Remembering all of these achievements, eight courageous Asgardian followers came from different parts of Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, to mark this second anniversary with a cheerful get together in KLCC, the beating heart of Malaysia, at the feet of the Twin Towers. Among us were a PhD candidate in space studies, a student of economics, a student of electrical engineering, a university lecturer, a high school student, a chiropractic doctor, a team manager for a Malaysian nation wide company and a software engineer. It is the Urbean Café that welcomed us and allowed us to celebrate this event.

We discussed on some of the achievements of our Nation, its current affairs and its short and long term future developments. While some of us have been long time Asgardians, others had just signed up on http://asgardia.space a few days before and still others had just heard about the First Space Nation a few hours before the meeting! All were cheerful and happy to finally meet in real life other Asgardian followers!

From the Inauguration of our Head of Nation at the Hofburg palace in Vienna on June 25th , I had kept the copy of the National Anthem that was then given to me as a guest and I shared some copies of the document with all of us and so, with the help of the recording available online, we rehearsed the anthem once and then went to sing it together outside of the café , in front of the emblematic Petronas Towers. It is there that we had a short session of pictures together, enjoying an evening out without monsoon and with a few stars. But then came the time to say our goodbyes promising to meet again very soon!

It was a beautiful moment of unity. Sharing about our lives and backgrounds, we realised that we had in our little group not less than 5 earthly nationalities from 3 continents and that yet, we were all united with the same vision! “One Humanity, One Unity”!

As Dr. Ashurbeyli concluded in his Head of Nation inaugural speech, we might not be the best but "we are the future.”
I believe he is right, we are the future!

Happy second Birthday ASGARDIA !!!