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In a development that could further advantage OPEC members as they step up production to compensate for falling exports out of Venezuela and (potentially) Iran, the Barents Observer is reporting that two of Russia’s largest Arctic out-shipment points for oil and LNG have become “packed with ice” leaving tankers and carriers stranded in the “paralyzed” area, which hasn’t been this packed with ice at midsummer in four years. Experts had expected that ice clogging up the Gulf of Ob would melt with the summer months, allowing Rosatomflots, the state-owned energy company responsible for the region, to avoid relying on their nuclear-powered icebreakers to clear the area.

According to Rosatomflot, its icebreakers will be working at least through the first week of July to free stranded ships from the ice. Two icebreakers, the Taymyr and the Vaygach, are working overtime. There are also several smaller tugs and icebreakers working in the waters around the Sabetta port.

One Rosatomflot representative pointed out that the climate change fears which had analysts worried about rapid melting of ice caps in the Arctic have apparently receded.

The global warming, which there has been so much talk about for such a long time, seems to have receded a little and we are returning to the standards of the 1980s and 1990s, says company representative Andrey Smirnov.

Companies shipping from the area have in recent years invested in building more powerful tankers capable of breaking up the ice on their own. The projects are expected to ratchet up exports from the region by the equivalent of millions of barrels of oil per year.

The Yamal LNG plant is fully dependent on smooth shipping to and from the port of Sabetta. A fleet of 15 powerful top ice-class carriers are being built for the project. The ships are capable of independently breaking through more than two meter thick ice. Commercial shipments from Sabetta started in early December 2017.

Further south, company Gazprom Neft is operating the Novy Port project, which is built to be able to deliver up to eight million tons of oil per year.  A fleet of six tankers are being built for the Novy Port. The first vessels of the new fleet, the Shturman Albanov and the “Shturman Malygin” were put on the water in early 2016. The third fleet tanker, the “Shturman Ovtsyn” set course for the history books when it in mid-winter 2017 left the yard of the Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea, made it through the Bering Strait and sailed all the way to Yamal. Later, also the Shturman Shcherbinin and the Shturman Koshelev webre built.

To help put the ice-pack in perspective, the blog Climateer Investor published a pair of heat-coded images showing the extent of the sea ice thickness in June 2018…

…Compared with June 2008 – a decade earlier.

So much for “global warming”…

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Authored by Oliver Wiseman via CapX.co,

What is it about the European Union and bad tech laws with boring names? Brussels managed to transform four harmless letters into a byword for irritating compliance-induced spam and pop ups as well as a consolidation of power for the internet’s biggest players. Now that the GDPR dust has settled, along comes Article 13 of the Directive for Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which was approved by the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs yesterday.

Article 13 requires websites to take “appropriate and proportionate” measures to make sure copyrighted material doesn’t appear on their pages. It would also require sites to “provide rightsholders with adequate information on the functioning and the deployment of measures”. Then there is the jargon-laden instruction for Member States to “facilitate… cooperating between the information society service providers and rightsholders through stakeholder dialogues to define best practices”.

Those appropriate and proportionate measures mean “content recognition technologies” along the lines of Content ID, the copyright filter that Google uses to stop YouTube users from uploading copyrighted videos. As open internet campaigner and writer Cory Doctorow has explained, everyone hates the filter:

“Big rightsholders say that it still lets crucial materials slip through the cracks.

Indie rightsholders say that it lets big corporations falsely claim copyright over their works and take them down.

Google hates Content ID because they spent $60,000,000 developing a system that makes everyone miserable,…

and YouTubers and their viewers hate it because it overblocks so much legit content.”

The EU seems to have looked at this way of doing things and decided it should be extended – by law – not just to all online videos, but to everything on the internet.

It is hard to overstate the extent of the threat this piece of legislation is to online culture as we know it. In an open letter to European Parliament President Antonio Tajani, a group of internet pioneers that includes Tim Berners-Lee, Vinton Cerf and Jimmy Wales spell out the danger:

“Article 13 takes an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance of its users.”

Article 13 essentially amounts to an outsourcing of copyright enforcement to internet companies and imposes a requirement to check everything posted online for copyright infringement. That will have grave consequences for both free expression and competition.

That the legislation is bad news for free expression is inevitable for two reasons. The first is the inadequacy of the technology. As Doctorow explains, YouTube’s filter just isn’t very good at distinguishing copyright from non-copyright material. The same would be true of whatever firms are forced to implement by Brussels. And so, plenty of material that in no way falls foul of copyright law will be caught by the filters. Given that the internet platforms now responsible for policing copyright have little reason to be anything other than risk averse when it comes to preventing infringement, overkill seems unavoidable under Article 13.

But the bigger problem is that identifying material shouldn’t be enough to automatically block its use. It’s not hard to think of harmless pictures that could be caught by a filter because of a logo on a t-shirt or a poster on the wall. There is also the question of what is known as fair dealing in UK copyright law and fair use elsewhere. These are the exceptions that allow people to use copyrighted material if they are doing so for research, criticism, review, parody or a number of other uses. A filter that automatically blocks copyrighted material would make no allowance for these important cases.

This is, among many other things, bad news for good fun. Memes – which very often involve the sharing, tweaking and re-sharing of copyrighted material – wouldn’t make it passed the proposed filters. Nor would countless other ways we use the internet.

Article 13 wouldn’t just hurt users directly by limiting what they can post online, but indirectly by further tilting things in favour of the internet giants. The EU likes to talk tough – and impose big fines – on big tech. So why does it keep passing laws that impose regulatory burdens large firms can shoulder more easily than their smaller competitors?

The benefits of this copyright clampdown are nothing compared to the benefits of an open, vibrant online culture. But whereas the former are concentrated among a handful of industries, the latter are spread thinly across society. Such fights will always be imbalanced ones. But they are made worse when, as in Brussels, decision making is dysfunctional, remote and democratically deficient. That makes the legislative process easier to exploit by vested interests. Healthy political systems sometimes pass bad laws. But unhealthy political systems pass many more of them.

It is probably too late to stop Article 13. After very little public debate, it is set to be waved through a plenary session of the European Parliament. And so, with lamentably little fuss, the EU will have taken a big step towards ruining what makes the internet so great.

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Many Swedes were horrified in early 2017 when U.S. President Donald Trump linked immigration to rising crime in Sweden, but an increasing number now agree with him.

Amid soaring crime rates, gang violence, complaints about education, and pregnant mothers even being turned away from maternity wards due to a lack of capacity, resentment in Sweden has built over the influx of more than 600,000 immigrants over the past five years.

And as Bloomberg reports, paying some of the world’s highest income-tax rates has been the cornerstone of Scandinavia’s social contract, with the political consensus in Sweden to save money for when the economy is less healthy.

Yet the country is showing strains all too familiar in other parts of Europe with nationalists gaining support and Swedes increasingly questioning the sustainability of their fabled cradle-to-grave welfare system.

“The Swedish social contract needs to be reformed,” a dozen entrepreneurs including Nordea Bank AB Chairman Bjorn Wahlroos and Kreab Founder Peje Emilsson wrote in an op-ed in the Dagens Industri newspaper on May 31. “Despite high taxes, politics isn’t delivering its part of the contract in important areas. We get poor value for money.”

Although taxes have been raised in recent years, welfare has deteriorated, they said.

“I don’t trust welfare at all, I need to build my own capital,” Bothen said while sipping his cappuccino at the NK department store in central Stockholm. “The problem with immigration is that our welfare state is not quite dimensioned for it. Of course we should help people, and we have a good situation here in Sweden, but we can’t handle an unlimited amount of people.”

There are warning signs across Europe of what can happen if disillusionment goes unaddressed. In Britain, popular anger over rising immigration and creaking public services fueled the vote to leave the European Union. Nationalist parties, on the march across continent, just swept to power in Italy.

And, judging by the latest polls, the rise of extreme populist groups in Sweden is accelerating fast.

As Reuters reports, dozens of people have been killed in the past two years in attacks in the capital Stockholm and other big cities by gangs that are mostly from run-down suburbs dominated by immigrants.

With public calls growing for tougher policies on crime and immigration, support has risen for the ironically named, Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots that wants to freeze immigration and to hold a referendum on Sweden’s membership of the European Union.

Their worried mainstream rivals have started moving to the right on crime and immigration to try to counter the Sweden Democrats’ threat in the Sept. 9 election. But so far, they are playing into the hands of the far-right.

“Right now they (mainstream parties) are competing over who can set out the most restrictive policies,” said Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin, whose Green Party is part of a minority government led by the Social Democratic Party.

“It clearly benefits the Sweden Democrats.”

Opinion polls put the Sweden Democrats on about 20 percent support, up from the 13 percent of votes they secured in the 2014 election and the 5.7 percent which saw them enter parliament for the first time in 2010.

The Sweden Democrats’ rise on the back of anti-immigration sentiment mirrors gains for right-wing, populist and anti-establishment parties in other European countries such as Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Austria.

The Sweden Democrats still trail the Social Democratic Party but has overtaken the main opposition Moderates in many polls. All mainstream parties have ruled out working with them.

But they could emerge from the election as kingmakers, and a strong election showing could force the next government to take their views into consideration when shaping policy.

Their policies include a total freeze on asylum seekers and accepting refugees only from Sweden’s neighbors in the future. They also want tougher penalties for crime and more powers for police, and say tax cuts and higher spending on welfare could be funded by cutting the immigration budget.

Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the Sweden Democratic party, has described the situation as “pretty fantastic”.

“We are dominating the debate even though no one will talk to us,” he told party members.

The Sweden Democrats have succeeded in linking the two in the minds of many voters, even though official statistics show no correlation between overall levels of crime and immigration. However, while the government denies it has lost control but Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has not ruled out sending the military into problem areas.

“Sweden is going down a more right-wing path,” said Nick Aylott, a political scientist at Sodertorn University said. “It is almost impossible to avoid according some sort of influence to a party with around 20 percent of the vote.”

Trump was right after all.

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Authored by Burak Bekdil via The Gatestone Institute,

Nothing could have better explained the Turks’ joy over their president’s election victory on June 24 than a cartoon that depicts a cheering crowd with three lines in speech balloons: “It was a near thing,” one says. “We would almost become free.” And the last one says: “Down with freedoms!”

Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, won 52.5% of the national vote in presidential elections on June 24. That marks a slight rise from 51.8% he won in presidential elections of August 2014. More than 25 million Turks voted for Erdoğan’s presidency. His closest rival, social democrat Muharrem Ince, an energetic former schoolteacher, won less than 16 million votes, or nearly 31% of the national vote.

The opposition candidate admitted that the election was fair. There have been no reports of fraud from international observers, at least so far.

Despite the defeat, Ince was one of the many winners of Election 2018. For the first time since 1977 a social democrat politician won more than 30% of the vote in Turkey. Ince’s party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) won only 22.6% of the vote in the parliamentary race.

Despite Erdoğan’s clear victory, his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) performed worse than expected: It won 42.4% of the vote in parliamentary elections, down eight percentage points from the 49.5% it won in the previous parliamentary race in November 2015.

That decline deprived the AKP of winning parliamentary majority, with 295 seats in Turkey’s 300-member house. Instead, AKP’s right-wing partners, the National Movement Party (MHP) unexpectedly won 49 seats, bringing the total number of seats controlled by the governing bloc up to 344, a comfortable majority.

The AKP-MHP alliance marks the official birth of Turkey’s new ruling ideology: A bloc of Islamists and nationalists that traditionally represent Turkey’s lowest educated rural population. Erdoğan may not be too happy having to share power with a party that was last in a coalition alliance in 2002 but with his AKP lacking a parliamentary majority he will have to keep the nationalists in partnership. He may also have to give them high-profile seats like vice-president and/or ministerial positions.

After election results on June 24 Turkey will be further dragged into authoritarian politics with the blend of Islamism and nationalism emerging as the new state ideology. Deep polarization in the Turkish society will probably get deeper. There are already signs. In a victory speech in the evening hours of June 24 Erdoğan’s foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said that the losers of the election were the “terrorists”. In this politically-divisive, pathetic logic, 47.5% of Turks are terrorists: that makes about 38.5 million people.

The national joy over the re-election of a man known best to the rest of the world for his authoritarian, sometimes despotic rule, is not surprising in a country where average schooling is a mere 6.5 years. As recently as April 2017, the Turks had already given up the remaining pieces of their democracy when they voted in favor of constitutional amendments that made Erdoğan head of the state, head of government and head of the ruling party all at the same time. The amendments gave the president almost unchecked powers and the authority to rule by decree.

Pictured: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan speaks at a campaign rally on June 23, 2018 in Istanbul, Turkey. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

In its “Freedom in the World 2018” report, Freedom House categorizes Turkey as a “not free” country due to “due to a deeply flawed constitutional referendum that centralized power in the presidency, the mass replacement of elected mayors with government appointees, arbitrary prosecutions of rights activists and other perceived enemies of the state, and continued purges of state employees, all of which have left citizens hesitant to express their views on sensitive topics”. Turkey also tops Freedom house’s list of countries where democracy has been on decline for the past decade. Ironically, even civil war-torn Syria is at the bottom of the list (meaning its democracy has declined the least among the countries surveyed).

Erdoğan’s Turkey was galloping toward dictatorship even before the Turks gave him the powers he wanted in the April 2017 referendum. Millions of anti-Erdoğan Turks are now terrified of the prospect of further torment under an Islamist-nationalist coalition show run by a president with effectively no checks and balances. Ince, the opposition candidate against Erdoğan has vowed to fight back. Let us hope he does not have to fight back from where many Erdoğan opponents have been locked up.

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Going from rags to riches is every mortal’s dream these days, and with these Forbes figures, Statista’s Martin Armstrong introduces us to some names who have managed to do so by jumping into the crypto game right on time.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Although they are nowhere near the biggest fortunes of the world, their combined net worth matches the GDP of countries such as Cambodia, Honduras or Cyprus.

A factor that clearly differentiates them from other multimillionaires is their age: none of them are over 60, and the youngest one, Brian Armstrong, has managed to stack up a considerable wealth at only 35 years of age.

Their nationalities also shed light on the geographical range of cryptocurrencies: it comes as no surprise that U.S. and Canada citizens dominate the list.

However, there is one intruder in this North American race: Changpeng Zhao, the Chinese CEO of Binance, one of the main crypto exchanges.

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Authored by Vladimir Kozin via Oriental Review,

On June 13, 2018, the Washington Post published an original piece by Paul Sonne that describes America’s potential use of the low-yield nuclear warheads that are to be installed on the future US B-61-12 nuclear bombs, as well as on the ballistic missiles carried by the Trident II submarines in the form of W76-2 warheads, in accordance with Washington’s 2018 nuclear doctrine.

The article claims that the introduction of low-yield warheads and the idea of their potential use is being justified by the Pentagon as necessary due to the fact that Russia is allegedly prepared to use similar warheads against NATO countries, based on that nation’s current nuclear doctrine and because a purported strategy of “escalate to de-escalate” has apparently been “approved” by Moscow.

It should be kept in mind that the Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, which has sections covering the potential use of nuclear weapons, says nothing about the power of the nuclear weapons that might be utilized, nor is there any mention of warheads with either high or “low” yields in TNT equivalents. Those sections of the official doctrine do not even categorize Russian nuclear weapons into strategic vs. tactical varieties.

Only one term is specified in Russia’s military and strategic posture: “nuclear weapons.” And only two circumstances are listed as a basis for their potential use: the first — only in response to the use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against the Russian Federation and/or its allies; and the second — in the event of aggression against Russia that employs conventional weapons to the point that “the very existence of the state is threatened.” In other words, only reciprocal actions are permitted in either case.

Nor does the Russian nuclear doctrine list the countries or alliances against which nuclear weapons can be used.

It seems odd that the US still does not understand the basic tenets of Russia’s nuclear posture. And it must be said that this is not the first time that Western analysts have taken such an unprofessional approach. This has become especially glaring in the run-up to the next NATO summit, which will take place July 11-12 in Brussels.

On the other hand, the newest US nuclear doctrine, which was approved last February, specifies 14 justifications for the use of nuclear weapons, including “low-yield” warheads, which is how US arms experts classify nuclear warheads of 5.0-6.5 kilotons and below. These are precisely the sea- and air-launched warheads the Pentagon intends to utilize in accordance with its new concept of “escalating to de-escalate.” Under that theory, low-yield nuclear warheads can be employed by US nuclear forces on an increasing scale in a variety of regional conflicts, with the aim of “de-escalating” them, which might be accomplished with the help of a nuclear first strike.

This practice could cause a chain reaction in the use of nuclear weapons, involving not only “low-yield” warheads, but also more powerful nuclear explosives.

The practice being described — the potential use of low-yield nuclear weapons, which is a real fixation for the current US administration and is being discussed with increasing frequency in the US — suggests that America’s military and political leaders are committed to dramatically lowering the minimum threshold for their use and expanding the list of acceptable reasons to utilize them under real-world conditions.

The adage from the past that everyone could relate to — “A nuclear war cannot be unleashed, because there will be no winners” — is now absent from the political statements that are being heard. It is clear that forces have taken the upper hand on Capitol Hill that are still incapable of imagining the consequences of a nuclear Armageddon. Such a path, even if this scenario proves unlikely, will inevitably lead to a potential undermining of the already fragile non-proliferation regime and a breakdown in the negotiations on establishing control over nuclear facilities, which — and this is not news — very few countries are taking part in at the present time.

For all these reasons, a dangerous future practice like this needs to be reexamined by Washington, in the interests of preserving global stability. In order to achieve this goal, the strategic guidelines for inflicting a first “preemptive and preventive” nuclear strike, as well as the continuing premise of “unconditional offensive nuclear deterrence,” which have remained unchanged since 1945, must be completely eliminated from American nuclear strategies.

These are not ultimatums, as someone defending US nuclear policy has already tried to portray them. This is a completely natural, logical, and sensible step, which would no doubt be positively received all over the world.

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Establishment Democrat Joe Crowley’s nearly two-decade career in Congress came to an end Tuesday night in a shocking primary loss to 28-year-old Democratic Socialist and former Bernie Sanders organizer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – a harsh critic of Israel and immigration enforcement.

Victory! pic.twitter.com/il5677H0bh

— Rebecca Katz (@RebeccaKKatz) June 27, 2018

Crowley – the 56-year-old Chairman of the House Democratic caucus had long been viewed as a potential House Speaker, and has been a staple in New York City politics as chairman of the Queens County Democratic Party. 

His loss to insurgent candidate Ocasio-Cortez, his first primary challenge in 14 years, is a major upset to establishment Democrats trying to cobble together a “blue wave” of progressive support to combat Republicans in the upcoming midterms. Instead, it looks like Democrats are as fractured as ever. 

There are a lot of reasons why @Ocasio2018‘s win (and Crowley’s crushing loss despite the entire Democratic establishment united behind him) is so exciting and awesome. She’s a genuinely great candidate for so many reasons. But this chart is simply huge for US politics: https://t.co/TTdM0SWUVI

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 27, 2018

I’m going to show you just who @Ocasio2018, Justice Democrats, and DSA beat tonight. it isn’t @JoeCrowleyNY. It’s the most powerful people in America. Here are Crowley donors Sheryl Sandberg, Sean Parker, Google NET Pac, and Facebook’s PAC. pic.twitter.com/tqkKYhqSLm

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) June 27, 2018

Crowley donors who lost tonight, part II: Intel, American Bankers Association, Citigroup, UPS, T-Mobile, Altria (Phillip Morris), ERNST & YOUNG, Florida Sugar Cane, Boeing, Constellation Brands, Altice, The Options Clearinghouse, Diageo, Cisco Systems…

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) June 27, 2018

Crowley donors who lost tonight: Facebook, Google, Blackrock, Humana, Raytheon, Capitol One, AFLAC, Microsoft, CIGNA, TD Bank, H&R Block, Salesforce dot com, United Technology, Deloitte, Covington and Burling, Anheuser-Busch, Honeywell…

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) June 27, 2018

(there are eleven more tweets listing Crowley donors, so we’ll stop here)

And speaking of Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept has covered New York’s 14th Congressional District race extensively (see here). Here’s why they thought she might have a chance back in May: 

THE SAFE MONEY on a race in a machine-dominated district is to bet on the boss. And, to be sure, Crowley is likely to be the favorite. But Ocasio-Cortez has a few plausible reasons to believe there’s a path to victory:

• She has more than 8,000 individual donors; that’s a pool she’ll continue to grow and can keep tapping into if her campaign gains momentum. It suggests that the 5,000+ signatures she turned in were no fluke.

• Primaries are very low-turnout affairs, meaning the absolute number of votes she needs to win is quite low, in the high-four figures or low-five figures.

• Crowley is the king of Queens, but he represents the Bronx from a distance. If Ocasio-Cortez can organize and run up her numbers in the Bronx, while holding her own in Queens, she can win.

The case against her isn’t based on substance, but on raw politics. Crowley is a very good old-school politician: engaging on the stump, charismatic, and diligent about building relationships. He has close relationships with the bosses of the Bronx machine, which can turn out votes. And, for many Democratic voters, he’s not that bad. –The Intercept 

President Trump took the opportunity to throw salt in Crowley’s wounds Tuesday night, tweeting: “Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out!”

Wow! Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out! That is a big one that nobody saw happening. Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2018

Or, maybe Ocasio-Cortez schooling Crowley over ICE was the nail in the coffin in these politically charged times?

ICE is operating exactly as designed when it rips screaming children from parents. That’s exactly why we must abolish it.

We MUST have the moral and political courage to #abolishICE.

Weak half-measures do nothing. This is a defining moment of our time – the time to act is now. pic.twitter.com/0viiQ4qdz8

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) June 19, 2018

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Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

A blob of molten lava has been detected under three states in the Northeast.  The new supervolcano currently brewing under New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont is creeping upwards and surprising geologists.

The region in which the new volcano was discovered is geologically stable with no active volcanoes in the surrounding area.  Earthquakes are almost unheard of in the area.That means that the formation of the massive magma buildup in the northeast is a relatively recent event, scientists say. But keep in mind, in the timescale of Earth’s geological processes, this still means tens of millions of years.  If these findings hold up though, the northeast could be considered more active geologically than previously thought.

Fox News reported that the unexpected supervolcano has been gradually making itself known to geologists in the United States. A huge mass of molten rock is slowly climbing upwards beneath three of the nation’s northeastern states. The new supervolcano only became evident through a new and large-scale seismic study. “The upwelling we detected is like a hot-air balloon, and we infer that something is rising up through the deeper part of our planet under New England,” says Rutgers University geophysicist Professor Vadim Levin.

“Our study challenges the established notion of how the continents on which we live behave,” Professor Levin says. “It challenges the textbook concepts taught in introductory geology classes.” But there should be no fear of this supervolcano erupting anytime soon either.

“It will likely take millions of years for the upwelling to get where it’s going,” Professor Levin explains. “The next step is to try to understand how exactly it’s happening.”

“It is not Yellowstone-like, but it’s a distant relative,” Professor Levin says.  And geologists say that the volcano may never erupt at all. “Maybe it didn’t have time yet, or maybe it is too small and will never make it,” Professor Levin told National Geographic. “Come back in 50 million years, and we’ll see what happens.”

These recent findings, which were published in the journal Geology, suggest that New England may not be so immune to abrupt geological change. “Ten years ago, this would not have been possible,” said Levin. “Now, all of a sudden, we have a much better eye to see inside the Earth.”

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An 82-year-old Japanese hermit who “escaped” the entertainment industry and found bliss on a remote island has been yanked from his home of 29 years by Japanese authorities and taken to a government facility some 37 miles away. 

Masafumi Nagasaki decided to live in solitude in 1989 after a friend told him about an archipelago in the southwest of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. He made his home on Sotobanari (“Outer Distant island”), a 1,000 meter-wide kidney-shaped island. Surviving on rice cakes and bottled water, Nagasaki rarely saw anyone outside of his weekly trips by boat to a settlement an hour away for provisions – paid for with a small stipend sent to him by his family.

Each day is conducted according to a strict timetable, starting with stretches in the sun on the beach. The rest is a race against time as he prepares food, washes and cleans his camp before the light fails and insects come out to bite. -Reuters

“Finding a place to die is an important thing to do, and I’ve decided here is the place for me,” he said.

Discovered in 2012 without clothes at the age of 76, Nagasaki became known as the “naked hermit” – and has chosen to stop hunting and fishing out of a sense of guilt over having to kill the few animals who also inhabit the island. Before his recent eviction, he spent five days with Alvaro Cerezo, who operates island touring company Docastaway. 

Cerezo told news.com.au that Nagasaki was evicted after someone found him in a “weak” state on the island, despite his Nagasaki being in generally good health. He “probably only had the flu” when he was found, said Cerezo. 

Nagasaki describes how a typhoon devastated the island in his second year – stripping it of vegetation and leaving Nagasaki to bake in the sun. He persevered for 27 more years, adapting to his environment while making weekly trips by boat to a settlement an hour away to buy food and drinking water.

He also described his perfect death, on the island in 2012 – his home of nearly three decades. 

“It hadn’t really occurred to me before how important it is to choose the place of your death, like whether it’s in a hospital or at home with family by your side. But to die here, surrounded by nature — you just can’t beat it, can you?”

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