 Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the Republic, it gave the mighty a comfort to the place we are today. A road fraught with pitfalls and detours, but well and marked with smooth sailing as well, and leading as always forward. The Republic of Malawi was founded on 26 May, 1977, as the Grand Republic of Goldstein. Inspired by the movie The Mouse of the Roard, my friend James and I decided to start our own country. He was king and I was prime minister, and in short order we had the framework of a new nation, including our own laws, money and play. After a while, James moved on to other projects and places, but I stuck with the idea and over the years, developed plans to turn Goldstein into a real nation. In 1998, that plan became a reality when I obtained this land here within Nevada, raised the flag and declared this to be the Republic of Malasia. Even then, the process of growth was slow. The catalyst in our development was the transitioning concept from the idea of a largely virtual nation to one that is tied to a real place, this place. This meant transitioning from our early population of online citizens and fictional locales to citizens we actually know and places that are actually real. Well, that seems like an obvious change. Men and micronations have only virtual citizens and lack a real homeland. Once we made this change, things began to fall into place for Malasia. Making our nation as tangible as possible, given our small size, became the goal. Sovereignty and independence became real goals, not just words on a website. It became important to not just state that we have a post office or a bank, for example, but to actually have these things, real places in our real nation. I determined that Malasia should and would be a functioning nation with all the trappings that a nation has and that those things should work and actually function. The goal is always to build Malasia into everything that a nation can be, albeit in a small package. And this we have done. From a formless idea 40 years ago, Malasia is now a real place, a real nation, staking its claim on this earth. Today we have our own money, stamps, postal and phone system, a unique culture and customs, a space program, a Navy, everything that a nation should have. Every day the flag flies proudly over this land, our land, our nation. We have made a real name for our Malasia and established a proud reputation as a leader in the world of small nations. We have worked hard to build Malasia into the great nation it is today. And we will continue to do so over the next 40 years and beyond. As I often say, the future belongs to Malasia. I am very, very proud of what we have accomplished together as a nation and just as proud to lead this nation into that future. God bless you, long live Malasia.