Chris Page's Blog

Spoti-bollocks

The alert reader (hi!) will have seen that I posted that I cancelled my Spotify subscription recently.

Here’s a tiny but exciting update bringing you the full story of Chris Page’s wire-fight conflict with Spotty’s CEO. 

Spotify’s business practices, ie, ripping the living financial heart out of everyone that does business with them and eating their entrails, have attracted a little controversy over the years, every year, all the time. Some artists like Joni Mitchel and Neil Young have withheld their music from the platform from time to time, and more are withdrawing now.

Recently, the co-founder of Spotify, Daniel Ek, invested (through another of his companies) €600m in military battlefield AI made by Helsing (in addition to an initial €100m two years ago).

Oxymoronic military intelligence fused with moronic artificial intelligence? Feel the collective shudder.

The Israeli military since the beginning of the genocide has been using AI that is functionally similar to Helsing’s to analyse intel and draw up lists of targets. Obviously, that has worked out well, ensuring no innocent people were killed or maimed or burned alive in hospitals along the way.

Apart from the ethics of any kind of armaments, you now have robots drawing up lists of people to kill, where to find them, and how to kill them. When a self-driving Tesla can barely make it down the street without mowing down an old lady or bursting into flames, how do we feel about AI driving a battle? We moral philosophers have a two-word expression for that.

Digression: we note the irony in worrying that battlefield robots will have no compunction about killing innocents, while it’s obvious that most humans on the battlefield already have no compunction about killing innocents. End of digression.

The money that Ek invested in this AI killer tech is derived in part from his profits and stock in Spotify. So my monthly subscription was — even if only a tiny part of that sub — going to the makers of killer apps.

And look at the amount of money Ek has invested — in destruction. If socially applied what could that do? I am reminded of that other tech head, Musk, who declared publicly that if someone could show him how to end world poverty with his wealth, he’d do it, until the UN gave him a plan and he became distracted in a pot of ketamine and forgot all about his challenge.

The news of Ek’s investment has prompted yet more artists to leave Spotify — Deerhoof leading the stampede (see what I did there?) Quite a few users are leaving too, if online comments are anything to go by and a number of friends are doing or have done the same. Good for them! Good for us all!

So, curious, I searched to see if there was any data on just how many users have left the platform. Given Spotify’s spotty record (see what two things I did there?) users must be leaving in their droves and Ek must be on his pleading knees by now.

No, they aren’t and no he bloody well isn’t. In the last quarter the number of new subscribers has actually increased.

Increased! Paying subscribers were up 12% from 276m from 268m at the end of March, and monthly active users were sup 11% to 696m from 678m. But surely Ek noticed I cancelled last Sunday! Down! On! Your knees!

I have no idea where to go from here. Ek has given howevermuchmoney to make horrendous new killing software, and the potential targets of that killing software are rushing to give him yet more money.

A good friend recently marvelled how little response he got from any social media or Substack post he makes about substantial subjects — say, G a z a — but a photo of morning cappuccino with a smily face in the froth will have people beating on the like button as if the coffee had just won the Nobel Prize for being a cup of coffee.

It will be interesting to see whether Spotify’s third-quarter reports show any rise or fall in users. Or it might not. It might be utterly slam-my-head in the closet door demoralising.

Well, there are my spotty, ranty bollocks. I leave them there for you to do with as you will. But the soundtrack will not be brought to you by Grinding-War-Machine-ify.

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Japan First, at last!

The rise of pop nationalism in the land of wa

Word of the day, mot du jour, kyō no ryūkōgo (今日の流行語), would appear to be 日本人ファースト. This past week, the phrase has been buzzing in the media — mainstream and social — with all the subtlety and charm of the seasonal cicada on hormonal overload as Japan heads into its July upper-house elections. As the term has been trending on X-Twitter, non-Japanese friends have been posting their alarm on Facebook. 

日本人ファースト— Nihonjin First, or, to render it with its full cultural friction intact, Japanese People First, is a dully clichéd nationalist appeal: prioritise the welfare of Japanese citizens, defend national identity, and resist the perceived encroachment of foreign influence. The kind of slogan that arrives with depressing predictability alongside increasing demographic anxiety and economic uncertainty. And the form and origins of the phrase 日本人ファースト tell a similarly dispiriting story.

The slogan combines Japanese and English: 日本人 (Nihonjin) for ‘Japanese people’ and ファースト, the English word ‘first’, rendered in katakana — the script used for foreign loanwords. So we get a rallying cry for national identity expressed partly in imported phonetics. Loanwords are not unusual in Japanese, where these katakana terms are ubiquitous — but in this context, the irony is hard to ignore: a slogan about defending Japanese purity framed using foreign vocabulary. It’s a bit like putting tomato ketchup on sushi.

That irony deepens when we trace the origin of the slogan itself. ‘[My Country] First’ rhetoric is not native to Japan. It follows a lineage that begins with America First, which emerged in US political discourse in the early 20th century. Most famously, it was the name of a prominent isolationist movement during the 1940s, associated with figures like Charles Lindbergh, and more recently revived by Donald Trump as a (mis)guiding principle of his presidency. In Britain, Britain First was used by fascist leader Oswald Mosley in the 1930s and is now the name of a far-right, anti-Muslim political group.

Now, in 2025, Japan’s nationalist fringe is adopting the same slogan format. It’s being used most prominently by Sanseitō (参政党), a relatively new party with a growing following. Sanseitō combines hardline nationalism, anti-globalist rhetoric, and an emphasis on traditional Japanese values. Their platform includes opposition to foreign land ownership, reductions in immigration, and calls to restore Japan’s cultural and political autonomy.

Sanseitō has positioned itself as a populist alternative to Japan’s mainstream parties, often using social media and YouTube to reach voters disillusioned with the political establishment. Their 日本人ファースト slogan is being used to frame policy proposals focused on protecting pensions, improving food security, and shielding Japan’s domestic economy from external pressures. The messaging is clear: Japan must look inward, shuck off pernicious foreign influences, and reclaim its purity to survive.

Or become GREAT again.

While nationalist sentiment has always been part of Japan’s political DNA, what we are seeing now is something more virulent: a well-adapted mind-virus, long incubated on the margins, now finding a new host in younger generations. This isn’t your grandfather’s post-war conservatism. It’s nationalism in a new costume for a new audience — tech-savvy, meme-literate, historically clueless, and politically illiterate. 

The language may be Japanese, but the attitude is globally synchronised.

This development is not unique to Japan. The slogan fits within a broader international trend — a surge in right-wing populism that prioritises national identity, turns immigration and diversity into  political weapons, and rejects global institutions. In the United States, this trend is shaped by figures like Steve Bannon, who has worked to foster international ties between far-right movements. In the UK, Reform UK, formerly led by Nigel Farage, campaigns on an anti-immigration, anti-net-zero platform. In Germany, the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) has grown in strength on a similar message. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally continues to position itself as defender of the French people against the ‘globalist elite’. Italy, Hungary, Poland, India — each has its own version of this narrative.

Japan has, until recently, been something of an outlier. While ultranationalist groups have always existed on the margins, the political mainstream largely avoided adopting this kind of populist language. Even now, mainstream parties like the LDP tend to couch nationalist policies in more technocratic or paternalistic terms. But the conditions that have fuelled far-right movements elsewhere — stagnant wages, narrowing life chances, the nagging sense that the powers that be regard you as a goggle-eyed minion — exist here too. It may have taken longer, but the arrival of overt ‘First’ language in Japanese politics is no surprise.

There’s also an irony in how this kind of nationalism is developing in a country that already has strong anti-immigration policies, a deeply embedded monocultural identity, and where the foreign population remains small by international standards. Japan does not need to close the gates — it never really opened them. 

This tension between surface-level harmony and underlying exclusion has had national exposure before, as the corpse in the cupboard sheds its head with an audible thump: in 2015, Ayako Sono, a conservative columnist and novelist, used her Sankei Shimbun column to argue that foreign residents in Japan should be housed in racially segregated zones — explicitly endorsing an apartheid-style arrangement. The Sankei put this on the front page. The fact that such views were given prominent space in a mainstream national newspaper speaks volumes about the kinds of ideas that remain within the bounds of public discourse.

This may also be a reflection of Japan’s internal contradictions. The country places a high value on wa (和) — social harmony — and prides itself on politeness and cohesion. But this can also mask more exclusionary tendencies. Foreign residents often face discrimination in housing, employment, and legal protections. It’s only in recent years that people started sitting next to non-Japanese on public transport. Rhetoric like Nihonjin First brings those tendencies to the surface. It gives them a slogan.

And perhaps the final irony is this: for a country so invested in its own cultural uniqueness, the most prominent new nationalist slogan is borrowed almost entirely from abroad. It has been translated, transliterated, and rebranded — but its DNA remains foreign.

It’s an irony as succulent as fine sushi: Japan’s emboldened nationalism isn’t just couched in imported terms — it’s part of, and enabled by, a global trend. The rhetoric may arrive dressed in katakana, but the DNA belongs to an international mind-virus.

And while it’s tempting to dismiss Sanseitō as a fringe party with limited reach, we’ve seen this story before. 日本人ファースト might be last to the international ‘Us First’ party — but it’s rubbing double chins with Farage and Bannon at the bar.

The is the story of the end of all things

Eat yourself happier (no added sugar)

The connection between food and mood seems as intuitive as that between food and health. But is a chocolate treat really the best way to cheer yourself up?

It is simple. You feel a bit down in the dumps — a bit jaded by work, or life with your partner, or living in a foreign country — so you indulge yourself with a tub of ice cream, a hamburger, or a bar of chocolate. You feel better for a while.

Some individuals with persistent frustrations will soon be back at the comfort food, and they might not realise that their mood-enhancing food is actually exacerbating the problem.

Comfort food is often rich, high in carbs and sugar. It is probably processed — it probably burns too fast and lacks many of the right proteins and fats that act as natural and sustainable mood (and energy) stabilisers.

For a graphic illustration, witness the effect of Morgan Spurlock’s exclusive McDonald’s diet. In the documentary Super Size Me, he changes in less than a month from bright young thing to hyper-animated zombie. He is listless between meals and apparently stoned after them.

Then there is the tale of Appleton, Wisconsin High School in the US. The school was a basket case of behavioural problems, weapons, academic non-achievement, violence, and suicides. In 1997, fast food and sugary drinks were banned from the school and replaced by natural, unprocessed food — a natural source of some of those positive mood foods. The school went quickly from behavioural sink to a model institution where incidences of the violent, self-destructive, and anti-social kind sank to near zero. What’s more, academic performance rocketed.

So how does this work? A lot of our preferred fun foods have a high glycaemic index (GI), which means they release their energy quickly. After eating, we are swamped with energy and temporary mood enhancers like caffeine and sugar. The body burns up the energy too quickly and we crash. The more high-GI food we consume, the more we appreciate the rush, the more often we go looking for it — and the more often we mistake it for real benefit. White bread and sugar additives are common culprits.

Good mood foods manage your feelings by balancing energy and nutrition — but also, crucially, by managing serotonin levels.

Serotonin is the natural feel-good chemical that the brain produces and is manufactured from the protein tryptophan. It follows that eating foods high in tryptophan will help sustain and enhance positive moods. Lean white meat, bananas, eggs, nuts, wheat germ, avocados, milk, cheese, and beans are good.

Once we are producing serotonin healthily, the body needs to be able to make the most of it. The brain is at least 60 percent fat, which is why some people on low-fat diets suffer depression. However, you can feed your brain without bloating yourself. Omega-3 and omega-6 fats are found in fish, nuts, and seeds, and regular consumption of these has been found to reduce anxiety and depression — and lighten the moods of people who do not suffer these conditions.

The good news here is that a diet that is properly balanced in serotonin and low- or moderate-GI energy sources will likely reduce the impulse to binge on the things that are less good for us. For example, chocolate addicts who take in extra serotonin find that they lose much of their craving.

So what does the ultimate mood-enhancing meal look like? The Food and Mood Project, affiliated with Mind, the mental health charity, recommends non-wheat pasta tossed with tuna and pesto, an avocado salad with walnuts and seeds, and fruit and oatcake for dessert.

Eating for mood is now taken seriously as an alternative to medication for people with serious anxiety, depression, food addiction, or stress — and increasingly, people who suffer none of these problems are incorporating mood foods in their diets as a way to just get more out of the day.

http://www.glycaemicindex.com/

http://www.foodandmood.org/

This article first appeared in Kansai Scene in 2005. I just found it in a digital box in the back of the cyber-fridge and decided to put it out on the online table for everyone partake. And, yes, that metaphor was tortured to the point of screaming.  

Liberation day: my unilateral declaration of independence was no walk in the park

Yesterday was an interesting day. Got up, resigned my job of 34 years, went for a mental health/decompression walk, got lost in a primeval forest, ended up blundering around in the rain and the dark wondering whether I would see my cats again. 

It has been a long time coming, this resignation. My day job over the years has paid my way and corroded my soul to unrecognisable rust-bones sinking in toxic sludge, under fume-belching machines on a hill of cracked skulls. I am not going to share in this space the mental debilitation that company brought me to, but it was, well, real and alarming. I was, on a monthly basis, exchanging mental health for a pay cheque. As many of us do.

A bright future if I survive

There certainly was no future there, and dismally, there never had been. It was an employment made of necessity, where on the best of days the employees are herded like hapless minions to make profits for the implacably incapable owners. HQ is a grey monument to Dunning-Kruger syndrome. 

I’m not saying the environment at HQ was toxic, but the sign on the door read: “Abandon Soap, All Ye Who Enter Here.” 

This spring, certain threads came together that allowed me to think of getting out on my terms in my own time, so I balled up my little hands and screwed up my eyes, and screamed and jumped. 

So that was yesterday morning. This was a huge thing for me. Thirty-four years of That Place, and now striking out on my own for an entirely different life. 

I had Liberation Day all planned out. I send the letter, do the bureaucracy, then head out to one of my favourite spots for a mental health walk and to start the decompression process. Nara park, and especially a walk in Kasugayama Primeval Forest, ending up — and this is crucial — at Sarusawa pond under the pagoda of Kofukuji with beer and kebab by the water. This is where I feel serene (despite the place being swamped with tourists). 

I made it to the top of mount Wakakusa with its expansive views of Nara and the nearby hills. I was full of oxygen and anticipation from the walk. Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Wanderer above a Sea of Fog came to mind. That was me!

A perfect day! 

Until I took a wrong turn in the forest. 

I would like to stress to readers who do not know Kasugayama forest how difficult it is to take a wrong turn. The place is managed and maintained, the trails are almost roads, there are signposts and you are on the edge of an actual city. But I managed it. 

There are monsters in the forest

I marched on with great confidence feeling the moment, feeling the metaphor for my new life. 

Until I realised that I had been walking an awful long time, we were running out of afternoon, but not running out of road. 

Things started to happen. It clouded over — rain was imminent. There was no cellphone signal. No coverage. Which meant no Google Map or whatever. Not that Google Maps is ever useful on the trails in Japan. The app usually just shows you as a glowing blue blob in a sea of undifferentiated green. In addition, Google Maps had me spinning slowly on my own thumb. This was counterintuitive: I knew where my thumb was, and judging from the single path, which clearly knew where it was going even if I didn’t, I wasn’t rotating. But the app is always right, right? Even when there is no signal, which ought to have been a giveaway. So I doubled back. And then doubled forward again. I doubled and dithered and fretted. 

It was dark. It was raining. Had I inadvertently strayed into North Korea? The beer at Sarusawa seemed a long way away.  

Jizo shrine to lost children, Kasaguyama forest, Nara

I came across a lonely and affecting jizo shrine, a memorial to children that have passed away, but which may as well have been a shrine to the pathetic fallen traveller. 

Things crashed about in the underbrush. Probably just deer, but could have been tengu or frumious bandersnatches. 

The reader who is alert to metaphors, or even augurs — and is there any other kind of reader? — will have seen by now where this is going. 

Yes, I have set off with purpose and confidence on a new journey in life, sure of where I was going, looking forward to the adventures on the way, only to have become lost, disoriented and soaking wet while Mrs Page asked me by text whether she ought to call the police to come and find me. 

Well, I didn’t die, I wasn’t eaten, I didn’t end up living in a cave like the wild man of the forest for twenty years. I eventually found my way out of the woods and all the way to Sarusawa pond, where, despite the tipping rain, I did in fact quaff a bit of beer under my umbrella. 

Now, metaphor people, how does that defiant beer in the rain change the narrative? Was it resolution in the face of adversity or the petulance of an alcoholic whose parade has just been well and truly pissed on? 

Tune in next post to find out!

This story is also on Substack, where you can see more words by Chris Page.

If you have enjoyed this story please consider sharing.

Escaping the Rats on the Back of Substack

Did I mention that I have set up a Substack? Next, I need to collect subscribers. No, these are not paying subscribers. Subscribing is as free as the wind or a Berkeley hippie.  

If you are interested, you can find me at psipook.substack.com, and please don’t feel shy about sharing that address with strangers you meet in the public bathhouse or strange dogs you come across in the park.  

I am having my annual spring crisis (distinct from my annual summer, autumn, and winter crises) as, in the day job, we are issued our schedules for the upcoming academic year, informed of our annual negative pay raise, and shown the blackthorn switch that will lacerate our souls. The schedule I have received for next year, in addition to the usual inert sacks of desiccated innards, includes actual vermin. Yes, THEY call it teaching, but I call it being buckled into a chair and having a cage full of rats strapped to my head. In classroom 101.  

I am in a froth of fear and loathing.  

Did I mention that I have an appalling day job? It’s appalling. It pays my way and corrodes my soul. Such a pit of futility, facile nonsense, and incompetence is not normally to be found outside Dante. Thirty-five years I have endured this corruption of life, marooned on this desolate pile. And now, with vermin eating my face.  

I am attempting to take action to create an alternative, independent income. To get the actual fuck out of here.  

To this end, I consulted an AI (no, really!). The AI has suggested a four-pronged plan to escape, one prong of which is, quite improbably, Substack. Who am I to argue with an advanced intelligence that will one day take over the world? So, SS—digital Schutzstaffel?—it is.  

One thing the AI has not mentioned is the fact, universally known, that THERE IS NO ESCAPE. Prisoners found trying to escape will be caught and forced to listen to *Hotel California* for the rest of their short and miserable lives. While rats feast on their eyes.  

We are not free men/things. We ARE numbers. And the bot knows this. Its insistence that escape is possible, and the convoluted escape maps that I have metaphorically tattooed on my skin, are just an elaborate hoax to assert control over me/us: build up hope and then smash it in front of our eyes while I/we flail helplessly in our own tears and viscera.  

So that’s what I’m up to. How about you?  

psipook.substack.com

Chris Page, Nara, March 2025  

If you are innocent, you have everything to fear

I spy with my little eye something beginning with you.

I was sitting in the bath the other night when I was startled to see a periscope rise out of the water at my feet. A glassy eye in the lens fixed on me as I clutched my flannel, desperate to preserve some dignity.  

‘Do not be alarmed,’ said the periscope.  

‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘You’re in my bath.’  

‘Just routine government surveillance,’ the periscope assured me. ‘We do it to everyone. If you’re innocent, you’ve nothing to fear.’  

Having nothing to fear was clearly not the point. My bath time with my rubber duck was being surveilled! If we knew spy agencies were dropping in on us mid-soak, we’d instantly see it as a grotesque invasion of privacy. But when they watch us online—tracking our browsing, monitoring emails, recording video calls, and even hijacking webcams—many of us shrug it off or live in denial.  

The truth is chilling: the NSA and GCHQ have built a surveillance infrastructure capable of hoovering up vast quantities of our personal lives. From phone records to internet activity, these agencies can monitor almost every facet of our existence, often with the cooperation of tech giants like Google, Apple, and Facebook. Programs like the NSA’s PRISM and GCHQ’s TEMPORA, revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013, illustrate how they have direct access to servers and encryption keys. This isn’t hyperbole; it’s documented fact.  

A periscope in every room  

The metaphorical periscope isn’t far from reality. Spy agencies can and have hacked webcams to spy on individuals. Documents from the Snowden leaks revealed that GCHQ ran a program called OPTIC NERVE, capturing still images from Yahoo webcam chats—often without users’ knowledge. Between 2008 and 2010 alone, they collected images from millions of accounts, some inadvertently containing explicit content.  

Such capabilities are the stuff of dystopian literature, yet they exist in supposedly democratic nations committed to privacy. Imagine what a true dictatorship could do with this technology.  

A history of invasive surveillance  

State surveillance is as old as states themselves. From ancient Chinese informant networks to Elizabethan England’s use of spies to root out Catholic dissenters, the idea of monitoring the populace has always been intertwined with power.  

In the modern era, programs like COINTELPRO in the US and MI5’s surveillance of peace groups in Britain highlight how surveillance often extends beyond protecting national security. COINTELPRO (1956–1971) targeted civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., attempting to discredit them through blackmail and intimidation. Similarly, MI5’s campaigns against groups like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) included burglary and infiltration.  

If you’re innocent, they say, you have nothing to fear. But history suggests otherwise.  

Surveillance is control  

The true purpose of mass surveillance isn’t just about catching criminals or thwarting terrorist plots—though these are the justifications often cited. It’s also about control: maintaining the power dynamics of the state and its corporate sponsors.  

Take Britain’s undercover police scandal. For years, officers infiltrated environmental and animal rights groups, sometimes entering relationships and even fathering children with activists under false identities. These were not violent extremists but innocent people campaigning for change. Some officers acted as provocateurs, inciting actions that led to arrests or further discrediting the groups.  

There are allegations that one officer undercover in the Animal Liberation Front went so far as to plant a bomb in a department store. Another officer contributed to the infamous anti-McDonald’s leaflet that triggered the McLibel trial—the longest and most expensive libel case in British history.  

Even families seeking justice for victims of police misconduct, like the Stephen Lawrence family, were subjected to surveillance. Their ‘crime’? Demanding accountability.  

Innocence is no defence  

The mantra ‘If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear’ is a convenient fiction. Surveillance often targets not the guilty but the inconvenient. Consider:  

– David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald (who broke the Snowden story), was detained at Heathrow under anti-terrorism laws. His real crime? Being connected to someone who exposed state secrets.  

– The Guardian newspaper itself faced direct intimidation, with agents physically destroying hard drives in their offices to prevent further reporting on the Snowden files.  

– Secrecy laws gag tech companies from informing users when their data is being accessed. In 2013, Lavabit, an encrypted email service used by Snowden, shut down rather than comply with demands it deemed invasive.  

The message is clear: innocence offers no protection when surveillance becomes a tool for silencing dissent.  

When privacy is commodified  

State surveillance isn’t the only threat to our privacy. Corporate online tracking has turned our digital lives into a goldmine. Social media platforms, search engines, and advertisers collect vast troves of personal data, often with our tacit consent via inscrutable terms of service. This data powers targeted advertising but also feeds into government databases through partnerships or coercion.  

Companies like Clearview AI, which scrapes billions of photos from social media to build facial recognition systems, show how corporate practices can blur into surveillance. With such tools in private hands, the line between state and corporate intrusion grows ever thinner.  

The (surveillance) creep  

Mass surveillance systems are rarely static. Once established, they inevitably expand. Today, governments justify these programs as necessary to combat terrorism. Tomorrow, they could be used to stifle protest, silence dissent, or consolidate power.  

The Snowden revelations barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. As artificial intelligence advances, so does the ability to analyse vast amounts of data in real time. Imagine a future where every text, call, and movement is flagged, judged, and stored. Innocence won’t matter. Suspicion will.  

Bath time for everyone!  

Surveillance is not just an issue of security; it’s about human dignity. Whether it’s a periscope in the bath or a webcam in the bedroom, the idea of being watched corrodes the basic trust we rely on to live freely.  

The claim that ‘If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear’ rings hollow. It is a platitude wielded to justify the unjustifiable. Surveillance isn’t just about catching criminals; it’s about power. And power, unchecked, always turns inward.  

So, clutch your flannel and keep your rubber duck close. Because in a world where surveillance is omnipresent, our innocence is irrelevant.  

Postscript

This article was first drafted in 2013 and redrafted in 2024. At the time of posting in February of 2025, Meta and Amazon, two of the biggest collectors of private data, have aligned with the authoritarian Trump-Musk regime. The regime is in the process of seizing control of TikTok in the US, another huge source of personal data, and has taken control of the Treasury payment system, giving access to the financial data on every citizen of the US. Trump is purging the FBI and re-making it in his image. And of course, Trump and Musk now have control over all US intelligence agencies and the apparatus of surveillance and control. 

Sources  

1. ‘Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ’ – *The Guardian*, 2014.  

2. ‘Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit’ – *Der Spiegel*, 2013.  

3. ‘The Police Spies Who Fathered Children With Activists’ – *The Guardian*, 2015.  

4. Snowden Leaks Compilation – *Electronic Frontier Foundation*.  

5. ‘The Secretive World of Corporate Surveillance’ – *EFF*.  

If You Are Innocent, You Have Everything to Fear

I spy with my little eye something beginning with you.

I was sitting in the bath the other night when I was startled to see a periscope rise out of the water at my feet. A glassy eye in the lens fixed on me as I clutched my flannel, desperate to preserve some dignity.  

‘Do not be alarmed,’ said the periscope.  

‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘You’re in my bath.’  

‘Just routine government surveillance,’ the periscope assured me. ‘We do it to everyone. If you’re innocent, you’ve nothing to fear.’  

Having nothing to fear was clearly not the point. My bath time with my rubber duck was being surveilled! If we knew spy agencies were dropping in on us mid-soak, we’d instantly see it as a grotesque invasion of privacy. But when they watch us online—tracking our browsing, monitoring emails, recording video calls, and even hijacking webcams—many of us shrug it off or live in denial.  

The truth is chilling: the NSA and GCHQ have built a surveillance infrastructure capable of hoovering up vast quantities of our personal lives. From phone records to internet activity, these agencies can monitor almost every facet of our existence, often with the cooperation of tech giants like Google, Apple, and Facebook. Programs like the NSA’s PRISM and GCHQ’s TEMPORA, revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013, illustrate how they have direct access to servers and encryption keys. This isn’t hyperbole; it’s documented fact.  

A periscope in every room  

The metaphorical periscope isn’t far from reality. Spy agencies can and have hacked webcams to spy on individuals. Documents from the Snowden leaks revealed that GCHQ ran a program called OPTIC NERVE, capturing still images from Yahoo webcam chats—often without users’ knowledge. Between 2008 and 2010 alone, they collected images from millions of accounts, some inadvertently containing explicit content.  

Such capabilities are the stuff of dystopian literature, yet they exist in supposedly democratic nations committed to privacy. Imagine what a true dictatorship could do with this technology.  

A history of invasive surveillance  

State surveillance is as old as states themselves. From ancient Chinese informant networks to Elizabethan England’s use of spies to root out Catholic dissenters, the idea of monitoring the populace has always been intertwined with power.  

In the modern era, programs like COINTELPRO in the US and MI5’s surveillance of peace groups in Britain highlight how surveillance often extends beyond protecting national security. COINTELPRO (1956–1971) targeted civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., attempting to discredit them through blackmail and intimidation. Similarly, MI5’s campaigns against groups like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) included burglary and infiltration.  

If you’re innocent, they say, you have nothing to fear. But history suggests otherwise.  

Surveillance is control  

The true purpose of mass surveillance isn’t just about catching criminals or thwarting terrorist plots—though these are the justifications often cited. It’s also about control: maintaining the power dynamics of the state and its corporate sponsors.  

Take Britain’s undercover police scandal. For years, officers infiltrated environmental and animal rights groups, sometimes entering relationships and even fathering children with activists under false identities. These were not violent extremists but innocent people campaigning for change. Some officers acted as provocateurs, inciting actions that led to arrests or further discrediting the groups.  

There are allegations that one officer undercover in the Animal Liberation Front went so far as to plant a bomb in a department store. Another officer contributed to the infamous anti-McDonald’s leaflet that triggered the McLibel trial—the longest and most expensive libel case in British history.  

Even families seeking justice for victims of police misconduct, like the Stephen Lawrence family, were subjected to surveillance. Their ‘crime’? Demanding accountability.  

Innocence is no defence  

The mantra ‘If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear’ is a convenient fiction. Surveillance often targets not the guilty but the inconvenient. Consider:  

– David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald (who broke the Snowden story), was detained at Heathrow under anti-terrorism laws. His real crime? Being connected to someone who exposed state secrets.  

– The Guardian newspaper itself faced direct intimidation, with agents physically destroying hard drives in their offices to prevent further reporting on the Snowden files.  

– Secrecy laws gag tech companies from informing users when their data is being accessed. In 2013, Lavabit, an encrypted email service used by Snowden, shut down rather than comply with demands it deemed invasive.  

The message is clear: innocence offers no protection when surveillance becomes a tool for silencing dissent.  

When privacy is commodified  

State surveillance isn’t the only threat to our privacy. Corporate online tracking has turned our digital lives into a goldmine. Social media platforms, search engines, and advertisers collect vast troves of personal data, often with our tacit consent via inscrutable terms of service. This data powers targeted advertising but also feeds into government databases through partnerships or coercion.  

Companies like Clearview AI, which scrapes billions of photos from social media to build facial recognition systems, show how corporate practices can blur into surveillance. With such tools in private hands, the line between state and corporate intrusion grows ever thinner.  

The (surveillance) creep  

Mass surveillance systems are rarely static. Once established, they inevitably expand. Today, governments justify these programs as necessary to combat terrorism. Tomorrow, they could be used to stifle protest, silence dissent, or consolidate power.  

The Snowden revelations barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. As artificial intelligence advances, so does the ability to analyse vast amounts of data in real time. Imagine a future where every text, call, and movement is flagged, judged, and stored. Innocence won’t matter. Suspicion will.  

Bath time for everyone!  

Surveillance is not just an issue of security; it’s about human dignity. Whether it’s a periscope in the bath or a webcam in the bedroom, the idea of being watched corrodes the basic trust we rely on to live freely.  

The claim that ‘If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear’ rings hollow. It is a platitude wielded to justify the unjustifiable. Surveillance isn’t just about catching criminals; it’s about power. And power, unchecked, always turns inward.  

So, clutch your flannel and keep your rubber duck close. Because in a world where surveillance is omnipresent, our innocence is irrelevant.  

Postscript

This article was first drafted in YEAR and redrafted in 2024. At the time of posting in February of 2025, Meta and Amazon, two of the biggest collectors of private data, have aligned with the authoritarian Trump-Musk regime. The regime is in the process of seizing control of TikTok in the US, another huge source of personal data, and has taken control of the Treasury payment system, giving access to the financial data on every citizen of the US. Trump is purging the FBI and re-making it in his image. And of course, Trump and Musk now have control over all US intelligence agencies and the apparatus of surveillance and control. 

Sources  

1. ‘Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ’ – *The Guardian*, 2014.  

2. ‘Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit’ – *Der Spiegel*, 2013.  

3. ‘The Police Spies Who Fathered Children With Activists’ – *The Guardian*, 2015.  

4. Snowden Leaks Compilation – *Electronic Frontier Foundation*.  

5. ‘The Secretive World of Corporate Surveillance’ – *EFF*.  

From Reagan to Trump 2.0: Billionaires astride the smoking remains of reality is a boringly predictable outcome

It’s 2025, and the United States — or what’s left of it — has entered its latest, gaudiest phase. President Trump (47, if you’re keeping score) sits in the Oval Office once again, this time surrounded by a cabinet of billionaires so ostentatious it makes Louis XIV look like an hole-dwelling ascetic. Elon Musk, having donated a small nation’s GDP to Trump’s campaign, stood on stage with the president-elect, flashing his best visionary disruptor grin and Nazi salutes. Mark Zuckerberg nodded approvingly from the audience, perhaps dreaming up a new algorithm to optimise democracy out of existence. Jeff Bezos arrived in the claws of one of his delivery drones. And while democracy flounders, the wealth of these tech titans has soared to unimaginable heights, leaving the rest of us choking on their methane scented tweets.

How did we get here? Was this dystopian reality some cosmic accident, a glitch in the matrix? Hardly. This is the logical endpoint of a capitalist system that was untethered and unleashed more than four decades ago. It all started with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the dynamic duo who convinced us that government was the problem and that the free market — an invisible hand apparently guided by the benevolence of billionaires — would save us.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t.

The Reagan-Thatcher blueprint

Reagan and Thatcher weren’t just politicians; they were social wrecking balls. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, they ushered in the neoliberal revolution with the zeal of evangelical preachers. Regulation was slashed, public assets were sold off to private bidders, unions were crushed, and taxes on the wealthy were shaved down to the barest nub. It was all wrapped in the glittering promise of trickle-down economics, the idea that if you make the rich richer, they’ll eventually share the spoils with the rest of us. Forty years later, we’re still waiting for that trickle.

What they really did was build a system where wealth and power could accumulate unchecked. They didn’t just plant the seeds of inequality; they fertilised them with corporate greed and watered them with public bewilderment. And now, we’re living in the jungle that grew.

Enter the tech kings

Fast forward to today, and the billionaires are no longer just donors or lobbyists; they’re running the show. Elon Musk is the most obvious example, a man who somehow convinced the public he’s Tony Stark when he’s really just a wannabe Bond villain.

Quick quiz. Q: Why are Tesla trucks bulletproof? A: Duh!

Musk’s open support for Trump’s campaign, not to mention his staggering financial contributions, makes it clear where his interests lie: maintaining a system where billionaires rule, and the rest of us marvel at their rockets.

And he’s not alone. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and other tech oligarchs have all, to varying degrees, supported or validated Trump’s return to power. Sure, they’ll throw the occasional philanthropic bone our way — a hospital here, a climate pledge there — but don’t mistake that for altruism. These gestures are PR stunts, distractions from the fact that their wealth and influence have ballooned while the rest of us are left to fight over the crumbs.

The tech bros didn’t emerge in a vacuum. They’re the heirs to the neoliberal legacy, embodying its core principle: that private wealth is inherently superior to public good. They’ve repackaged this ideology for the digital age, cloaking their self-interest in the language of disruption and innovation. But make no mistake: they’re not outsiders challenging the system. They *are* the system.

The cost of the billionaire era

What’s the price of this billionaire takeover? For starters, democracy itself. Trump’s second term has already been marked by policies that blatantly enrich his cabinet of billionaires, from tax breaks for corporations to government contracts handed out like party favours. Meanwhile, public institutions — already weakened by decades of underfunding — are crumbling. Schools, hospitals, infrastructure: all sacrificed at the altar of private profit.

Inequality, of course, continues to spiral out of control. The wealth gap between billionaires and the average citizen has reached obscene levels. It’s no longer just a gap; it’s a chasm, and at the bottom lies a sea of disillusionment, rage, and despair.

Trickle down was always gush-up. As money piles up in Elysium so does power. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Who knew?

With the brake cables cut and all checks and balances broken, there was only one possible outcome.

The Trump cabinet is reported to have a combined wealth of $340 billion.

But hey, at least we can watch billionaires play at Space Race on Twitter, right?

The slightly gilded dystopia

This is the world Reagan and Thatcher built, albeit with shinier gadgets and more charismatic villains. The billionaire class has replaced traditional governance, turning politics into a puppet show where they pull the strings. And let’s not kid ourselves: they’re not doing it for us. They’re doing it for themselves, for their wealth, for their power, for their legacy.

So where does that leave the rest of us? Trapped in a gilded dystopia where democracy is little more than a marketing slogan, where the rich rule with impunity, and where the dream of a fairer society feels more distant than ever. Perhaps we’ll eventually wake up and demand a system that values people over profit. Or perhaps we’ll just keep scrolling, liking, and retweeting while the oligarchs build their empires.

After all, who needs democracy when you’ve got a self-driving car and the promise of a one-way ticket to Mars?

We need to talk about Adrian Chiles. But do we really have to?

We need to talk about that Adrian Chiles.

Do we have to? I don’t want to. 

I don’t want to either, so let’s make it quick.

Thing is, Adrian has had his fingers in the ink again. Adrian keeps getting his fingers in the ink. 

He has a regular column in The Guardian, a publication that is a bastion of fine journalism, pioneering, even. In its early days, The Guardian brought news of the Peterloo massacre to London and the rest of the country within hours of it happening. Since then, they have helped publish Chelsea Manning’s and Edward Snowden’s data dumps from the US government. They blew the lid on corporations and the mega rich hiding their wealth offshore through the Panama Papers. They exposed Cambridge Analytica’s attempts to subvert democracy by manipulating voters through online manipulation blah. Their routine journalism confronts corporate and political conniving and lawbreaking, injustice and inequality, the climate crisis. They publish George Monbiot. They were even shot dead in the Jason Bourne movie (which one was it?) which shows real commitment to investigative journalism. 

And they publish Adrian Chiles. 

Chiles’ recent fearless forays into this turbulent world, which is awash in urgent narratives, have given us essays about ham sandwiches, leaving his wallet in the fridge, the smell of his dad’s car, his own inclination to vomit in moving vehicles, the disastrous slippiness of glasses on noses, and the entirely original and insightful observation that over time, the world fills with fangled things and phrases. 

The world is boiling in its own fluids, Trump and Musk are dismantling both civilisation and reason, the jackbooted right are marching past your front door, we teeter on the brink of nuclear war but Chiles brings us impolite people shouting at him in passing from a car.

The cost of living crisis is bankrupting businesses, forcing people to choose between heating and food and to find strategies for boiling water without turning on the kettle while energy companies reap obscene profits, but Chiles swoops on our consciousness urging us to use mushrooms instead of bread when making sandwiches — sandwiches being a major theme of his writing, it would seem. 

Of course, we do not all want to face the imminent collapse of all we hold dear all the time and a little diversion into the shared experience of the everyday, leavened with a good splurg of humour is welcome. But you won’t find it in Chiles’ stuff which has all the wit and appeal of a dull old fuck listing the inconsequentialities of his day to a decorticated spouse while she unpacks the bags of Lidl groceries, putting the canned and imperishables in the freezer and the perishables in the airing cupboard. 

Interesting, Adrian is not. 

No stubbed toe is too profound for Mr Chiles.

We are not, in case you are not catching my drift, talking about a new Orwell with a twenty-first century ‘As I Please’. 

Then there’s the interminable whinging about his own drinking. Oh my gosh, I drink too much! I am self-indulgent to a self-pitying degree. If Chiles were an actual alcoholic with an actual drink problem, then he would be welcome to our sympathy and even our reading time. But he’s not. He’s a fucking whinger who sees his unremarkable appetite for booze as something, well, remarkable, as something worth writing a column about. 

Imagine being cornered in an old folks home by an old lady who talked incessantly about her degenerate tendency to eat more chocolate digestives with her tea than she considers reasonable. That’s Chiles going on about booze. 

I believe he even wrote a book about it called something like The Hell of Regularly Having Four Pints When I Thought that Three was Adequate and Indeed the Maximum Daily Intake of Alcohol as Defined by HMG, CDC, WHO and the Biscuit-Eating Lady in the Old Folks Home.

He must be a lot of fun in a pub, that bloke. 

So why does the Graun give him so many column inches?

Surely it has nothing to do with the fact that his wife NAME happens to be [managing check] editor of the same The Guardian that hosts his columns. 

Having said that, a couple has to make a living. Times are hard and all that. Last year, Viner received a 150000 (42 per cent) pay rise. In 2014 Chiles himself was the highest paid whatever on TV, his earnings for the year topping four million quid. I suppose it’s possible he has blown on all that money on chocolate digestive or stubbed toe therapy, but has hasn’t bothered us with a column about it, so I suspect not. 

Of course, you have, dear reader, the option of not reading Chiles. We have the option of ignoring all fuck out of him.

Yet. He exists. 

Every day the Graun asks me for money, tiresomely totalling the number of articles I have read since whenever, and when that money-begging pop-up appears it is often right next to Chiles gurning face. I cannot separate the two images, I cannot undo that juxtaposition. I cannot pay to see that smug pudgy fizzog. 

Chiles is also taking up space that could be used by someone else. Someone who needs the money. Someone who is just starting out. Someone who has something to say and a style to say it in.