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![Clive Lewis's Water Bill - bringing water back to the people 💯 Please watch, listen or read this transcript. Because this is the sort of leadership Labour needs 👏 Clive Lewis MP He even calls for PR 👏 Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab) Margaret Thatcher’s revolution tore up the rulebook on political and economic management. She rewrote it with a single unwavering principle: that the pursuit of profit would serve the public good, even when it came to vital public services—even when it came to water. We often say that society stands on the shoulders of giants, but giants cast long shadows, and Thatcherism’s shadow looms dark over our water system today. Whether we see ourselves standing on her shoulders or trapped in her shadow, one thing is undeniable: she proved that the world can be made differently. And if it can be made differently once, it can be made differently again. That, as the brilliant anthropologist David Graeber understood, is the hidden truth of the world. It is something we create and can choose to create anew. We can do it better. Today, I want to show this House and this country that water is the lens through which we can imagine something better—a better way of running our economy, a better way of safeguarding our environment and a better way of empowering the public, for whom democracy supposedly exists. But that requires something very difficult: it requires us to break free from the constraints of our imagination and to let go of the idea that this economic model is all there is or all there ever could be. It saddens me to say that the Government’s Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 perfectly exemplifies this failure of imagination. One of its leading proponents has a particular rhetorical flourish they love to use when dismissing calls for public ownership of water. They say, “I’m more interested in the purity of our water than the purity of our ideology.” I love that quote. I love it because it lays bare just how deeply the ideology of privatisation, and all that goes with it, has embedded itself. So entrenched is it within our collective consciousness that we no longer recognise it as an ideology. We no longer see it for what it is: a systemic exploitation of a common resource for private gain. Instead, it has simply become the natural order of things. But how much longer can this go on? Since the crash of 2008, this ideology has been faltering under the weight of its own contradictions, yet its grip on British politics remains vice-like. Austerity, exploitation and corporate price gouging are still treated not as choices but as inevitabilities. Why? Because too many politicians on both sides of the House refuse to contemplate alternatives. For those on the other side of the House—on the Opposition Benches—I get it: this is their ideology. They are defending their class, and I would imagine they would go further still if they could. But on this side of the House, we have no excuse. We should be standing up for our class: working-class people—the public. Instead, we wrap their ideology in the language of fiscal responsibility, economic prudence and stewardship of the economy. But it is not fiscal responsibility when we balance the books on broken backs. It is not stewardship when the ship has been sold off and the crew left to drown. It is not prudence. It is power maintenance. Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab) I hope the engineers can check that the microphones and speakers are working while I ask a quick question. My hon. Friend mentions Members on this side of the House. There are far more of us on this side since July last year than there were in 2019, with a very different approach taken in our manifestos. Does he fear that the shift in tone he is suggesting is one of the reasons that we did so badly in 2019 but so well last year? Clive Lewis No, I do not. We have a distorted electoral system. Bring on proportional representation, because if we had PR, we would have had a different Government in 2019 and most definitely in 2017. Sometimes politicians have to do what they believe to be right and lead from the front. I think we should lead from the front. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind) I compliment the hon. Member on his Bill. To help his argument, there was overwhelming opinion poll support for public ownership of water in 2017 and 2019, and there still is today. Clive Lewis I thank the right hon. Member for his point. I will come on to this later, and I hope other Members will pick up on it, but the fact that the public are way ahead of this House on the issue of public ownership is one of the reasons why so many people are losing faith in the two-party political system. One only has to look at some political parties whose Members are not in their place—at the Reform party, for example, which has a policy of public ownership of water. Yes, its Members will privatise the NHS, but they understand how popular this is, and they are ahead of the curve—they are ahead of us on this side. Neil Coyle Really? Clive Lewis On the issue of water, yes, I would say they are, because whether I like it or not, Reform has a policy for water to be owned 50% by pension companies and 50% by the public. As much as it grieves me to say it, that is a policy of public ownership. They are populist; they are listening to a popular voice. Mr James Frith (Bury North) (Lab) Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis I will make some progress and then give way, and I will also try to keep the volume down a little bit. This is about the maintenance of a political and economic model that was never built to serve the public—a model designed to shield the wealth of asset holders, landlords, shareholders, corporations and, yes, privatised water companies. But here is the great irony: the very greed, recklessness and contempt of the water industry—its excesses—have cracked open the door, and through that crack, we glimpse an opportunity. It is an opportunity to shatter the myth of privatisation’s inevitability, to break free from the narrow, self-imposed rules that have caged our Government’s economic choices, to expose its failures, to challenge its dominance and, above all, to show this country that there is an alternative—an alternative that is democratic, sustainable and run in the interests of the many, not the few. We can do it better. Mr Frith My hon. Friend is making a typically impassioned speech. He says the general public are ahead of us. Where might that same public be when faced with the bill for bringing in the nationalisation he is clearly wedded to? Furthermore, in the event that we do not have to buy the water industry but seize it, the implications of that seizure will cause an economic collapse. At what point will he take responsibility for either of those scenarios when confronting a public who are, he says, ahead of us on this issue? Clive Lewis I will obviously come to many of those points later in my speech, but let me make this point now: I do not believe in nationalisation, and this Bill has nothing to do with nationalisation. This is about giving the public a say over their water. It is about governance, standards and democracy. Mr Frith Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis No, my hon. Friend has made his point. Mr Frith On this point? Clive Lewis No, I am going to carry on and make some progress. You made your point. Let the public— Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani) Order. Mr Lewis, I do not believe I was making a point at all. Clive Lewis My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker; I should have said that my hon. Friend made his point. The clock is ticking. The climate crisis is no longer a distant warning. It is our lived reality. Rising droughts, creeping desertification, depleted aquifers, wildfires, systemic collapse—these are no longer projections; they are the forecast turned fact. Preparing for this future and adapting to what is now inevitable has never been more urgent. The evidence is sobering. The UK’s water resources are under mounting pressure and not just from the climate emergency, but from rising demand and population growth. Experts now project that England could face significant water supply deficits as early as 2034 unless we act decisively. That is not a distant horizon; it is a little over a decade away. But while the threat has grown, our resilience has shrunk, because while the climate crisis has intensified, our water infrastructure has stood still, or, worse, been sold off, hollowed out and left to rot. In the 35 years before privatisation almost 100 reservoirs were built; in the 35 years since privatisation, not one major English reservoir has been built. But it gets worse, because in that same period private water companies have sold off 25 reservoirs without replacing one. Instead of investing in resilience, they have extracted value: £72 billion paid out in dividends while pipes leak, rivers choke, and the public pays the price. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith) asks how we can afford it; how can we not afford it? That is not mismanagement; it is a betrayal. If scientists tell us the climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity and to this country— Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab) Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis One second. If scientists tell us the climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity and to this country, we must treat it as such: an existential conflict. In that context, the actions of these companies—selling off reservoirs, failing to invest, polluting our water—are not just negligent; they are acts that actively undermine our national water security. In any other existential crisis, we might call that what it is: sabotage. And in a time of national peril, sabotage has another name: treason. Let me explain why this matters to me personally. When I served on tour in Afghanistan back in 2009—not in a boy band—I experienced something utterly alien to me: the gnawing fear of thirst; not the mild irritation of forgetting a water bottle, but the deep physical worry that there may not be enough clean water to get through the day. In Britain, we have been blessed: water falls from the sky; it fills our rivers, it soaks our fields, and we joke about it—it is part of who we are. But in Afghanistan there was no humour; only heat, dust and desperation. There I saw children trekking miles through the desert, not for food, not for money, but to beg for clean bottled water. Once we have seen that, and once we have felt that fear, we can never take water for granted again. We never again believe it is something we can waste or pollute or privatise without consequence. That is why I have brought forward this Bill: because anger is not enough; outrage, no matter how justified, will not fix the pipes, stop the sewage or fill the reservoirs. We need a plan. We need a strategy. We need a future. We can do it better. My Water Bill delivers that. It sets out the high standards our country deserves and the democratic governance our water system desperately needs. First, it establishes clear, ambitious targets to stop the sewage in our rivers and on our beaches, to restore our water to high ecological and chemical standards, and to deliver universal, affordable access to water as a basic human right—a right we have never had before in this country. It demands a system designed not just to extract profit but to adapt, to build resilience in the face of climate change, and to harness nature-based solutions that work with the environment, not against it. Secondly, it transforms governance. The Bill introduces representation for workers and local communities on the boards of water companies. It gives voting rights to employees and customers, so that those who use and maintain a system have a real say in how it is run. Water is not a commodity but a common good, and those who depend on it and pay for it should help govern it. Thirdly, the Bill lays the foundations for a democratic future. It establishes a commission on water ownership to advise the Secretary of State on long-term strategy, looking at international best practice, especially in OECD countries, where public water ownership is the norm, not the exception. Crucially, it creates a citizens assembly on water ownership to bring the public into the process, to deliberate, debate and decide how we can govern this most precious of resources. The public care, but how do I know that? I know because a small fraction of them are in the Public Gallery today, having travelled here from all over the country; I know because of the thousands of emails that have been sent to MPs across the House; and I know because those people will never stop campaigning until this injustice is resolved. They know that we can protect something not by selling it off, but by standing up for it, involving people in its care and ensuring that it serves the public, today, tomorrow and for generations to come. My Bill offers a pathway out of crisis. It offers control, resilience and democracy. It is not just about cleaning up our rivers, but about cleaning up the system that allowed them to be polluted in the first place. Privatisation is not just a problem—it is the problem. We can do it better. I can hear some people on the Labour Benches thinking, “But we have just passed”— Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab) You can hear thinking? Clive Lewis I can now—for my next trick, I can hear thinking! I can hear them thinking, “But we have just passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, Clive, so what are you talking about?” Yes, we have, but I am afraid to say it has been watered down—[Interruption.] Sorry, I had to get that one in—it was all going so well. The Act does not live up to what was promised, it does not deliver what is needed, and it certainly does not live up to its name. Do not get me wrong: it is a start. Grahame Morris I congratulate my good and hon. Friend on making an excellent speech and on advocating for public ownership of water and the opportunity to make things better. Does he agree that the mismanagement of the water companies under privatisation is a huge indictment of the whole principle? In my area, bills are way above inflation and huge dividends are being paid by borrowing money. At the very least, should our Government not be looking at stopping the payment of bonuses and share dividends while sewage pollution continues, and we have appalling mismanagement of the industry? Clive Lewis I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I agree with him wholeheartedly and I am just about to come to that point in relation to what the Water (Special Measures) Act does and does not do. It addresses some of those points, but as we have already discussed, privatisation is not just a problem, but the problem, and it is a big part of why so much has gone wrong. Unfortunately, the Water (Special Measures) Act does not live up to what was promised or what is needed, and it certainly does not live up to its name. However, it is a start, and I praise my colleagues on the Front Bench, including the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), who has done so much work in this area. Unfortunately, the Act is not a solution. Remarkably, my Government’s Water (Special Measures) Act does not even define what clean water means. There are no standards or targets—just vague intentions handed over once again to a regulatory system that has already failed us and to the companies that caused the mess in the first place. It says nothing about better governance, and absolutely nothing about the big, fat, humongous elephant in the room: who owns our water? If we do not deal with ownership, we cannot deal with accountability. If we cannot deal with accountability, we can forget clean water. No—we must go further on clean water standards, corporate accountability and what happens when companies fail. Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab) Does my hon. and gallant Friend accept that there is increased accountability in the Water (Special Measures) Act through the fact that many companies in the industry are now rewriting their articles of association to ensure that they are accountable not just to shareholders, but to the customers and users of water? Clive Lewis After 35 years of abject failure, it is too little, too late. My Bill would put the final nail in the coffin of this sorry chapter of our country’s water and water system. Neil Coyle Sticking with the puns, I commend my hon. Friend on his gallons of passion; he is always making waves. He criticises the Government’s legislation, which is obviously not yet in effect, but does he think that the Cunliffe commission will go any way towards addressing some of the concerns he has outlined? Clive Lewis Unfortunately, I do not, because again the elephant in the room—who owns our water—has been ruled out of the Cunliffe commission’s operational process. It cannot actually look at that issue. I have no issue with Sir Jon Cunliffe, but let us not forget that he originates from the Treasury—he probably has Treasury brain. That economic orthodoxy is part of the reason why we are in the place that we are. I do not have so much confidence in the Cunliffe commission, but I do have far more confidence in the People’s Commission on the Water Sector, which is being run by academics and which will report at the same time. I will be very interested to hear what it says. Neil Coyle Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis Those are the reasons why I have brought forward this Bill. The Government’s Act does none of those things, but my Bill does. Take just one example— Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani) Order. I believe Mr Lewis probably cannot hear interventions, because he is so loud himself. Members should intervene loudly if they wish to intervene. Clive Lewis I did hear the intervention, but I wanted to make some progress. Take this one example. Under this Bill, if a water company breaches the terms of its licence with a major sewage discharge, it can forget shareholder payout and piling on more debt. If it does it twice, it is in the last chance saloon. After three strikes, it is out—licence terminated and on its bike—and those price-gouging, asset-stripping, river-killing vulture capitalist outfits will be rolled into the sunset without a penny in compensation. What about those water infrastructure assets that they have been sweating for private gain? They go back into the public realm, thank you very much. If they start whining about debts, do not worry: we will do a full audit of what they invested, what they racked up in debt, what they paid out in dividends and what they stuffed into bloated executive pay packets. I will tell you this, Madam Deputy Speaker: I am yet to see a single privatised English water company walk away with anything other than a well-earned spanking and a sharp haircut for its creditors. Those assets will belong to the public once again, and we will not pay a penny more than they are worth. I can hear people thinking, “Where will the money come from? How will you invest in publicly owned water without the private sector?” I will tell them where it has not come from in these past 35 years—I am mind-reading again. Mark Ferguson (Gateshead Central and Whickham) (Lab) Will my hon. Friend give way? Clive Lewis I will just make some progress, and then I will give way. I am on a roll. Let me tell the House where the money has not come from for these past 35 years. It has not come from private shareholders or long-term thinking, and it certainly has not come from some mythical well of benevolent capitalism. The private companies have put in less than nothing; in fact, they have racked up more than £60 billion in debt. Thames Water has paid more than £7.2 billion in dividends since privatisation, and is now £15.2 billion in debt and counting—work that out. Now, it is trying to plug the hole with a £3 billion emergency loan that will cost 10% in annual interest. That is more than half a billion pounds a year, just for interest payments, courtesy of our bills. That money will not build a reservoir, fix a pipe or clean a river, but it will keep a rotten system afloat for a little longer. Noah Law My hon. and gallant Friend makes an impassioned case for public ownership—something that, in the right context, I am sure Members on all sides of the House can celebrate. On the point about the cost of financing to the public, though, does he agree that while there are some serious indiscretions in parts of the industry, such as in Thames Water’s case, this conversation about the appropriate financing model would be better entertained at a time when the cost of capital in the private water industry was not lower than the cost of public sector borrowing, on which, of course, we are in a very difficult situation? Clive Lewis The cheapest borrowing in the country, without a doubt, is public sector borrowing. The private water industry, which has had 35 years to sort this mess out, is not going to find investment. It is up to its eyeballs in debt. It is relying on a 50% increase in our bills by 2030, if we include inflation, and that is in the middle of a cost of living crisis. How can we justify that? The answer is that we cannot. Mr Frith The day after the seizure of public assets that my hon. Friend is describing, billions and billions of pounds of debt will come with it. What does he propose to do with that debt, other than refinancing, which is exactly where we are at now with the industry requirement to refinance the debt to try to keep bills down? Instead, he is advocating that the public purse take on that private debt. Clive Lewis At the beginning of my now seemingly rather long speech, I think I referred to a failure of imagination. Ask what Margaret Thatcher would have done when she was faced with similar problems. She would have fought her way through it. She changed the very fabric of our economy, our democracy and our politics, and she made it work. We can do the same, because the public are behind us. They want this to work. Mr Frith rose— Mark Ferguson rose— Clive Lewis I will make some progress. Let us recap, because I do not want to go on too long; I want to conclude, if I can. That money from Thames Water—that half a billion pounds in interest payments—will keep a rotten system afloat for just a little longer. The myth of privatisation is that the private sector will act in the long-term interests of the British public because it wants to turn a profit. That is preposterous, as is proven by the state of our water, and exhibit A is Thames Water. We can now turn to the question of where the investment will come from. Under public ownership, it will come from the only place it ever should have—from us, the public—and every penny of it will go back into the system. It will go into the pipes, the rivers, the seas we swim in and the water we drink. There will be a direct relationship between what we pay and what we get, with no offshore dividends, no bloated bonuses and no debt-laden shell games—just clean, accountable, democratic water. When I was in Afghanistan, every soldier had one critical duty: to stay hydrated. To dehydrate was considered a military offence, because it put the soldier and their team at risk. If someone ran out of water, we did not debate markets or metrics; we shared what we had. We had each other’s backs. As the desert-dwelling Fremen in James Herbert’s novel “Dune” believed: “A man’s flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe”. It is time our water returned to the tribe, to the people, to the public. We can do better; we must, and with this Bill, we will. I commend it to the House.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1905614329543532962/amplify_video_thumb/1905612252947865600/img/4N7RnIbeKkSuIXsR.jpg)
![HYBE and Min Hee-jin NewJeans Controversy from the Perspective of a 20-Year Entertainment Industry Expert | Kim Yoon-ji, Senior Researcher at the Overseas Economic Research Institute of the Export-Import Bank of Korea #1 [Investment Insight] 증시각도기TV HYBE has shown a somewhat immature side throughout this process. The essence of the issue has become less important. Hello, viewers and investors of Stock TV. Recently, there has been a lot of societal concern about the entertainment industry. Last year, it did well, but the question remains about how it will fare this year. We’re joined by Kim Yoon-ji, Senior Researcher at the Korea Eximbank Overseas Economic Research Institute, to discuss this. Welcome. Today, I brought a drink because this topic is not easy to discuss soberly. The situation between HYBE, Min Hee-jin, and NewJeans has escalated, and unfortunately, it’s no longer just management fighting but the artists have joined the fray. I’ve heard from someone in the industry that the close relationship between a producer and an artist is inevitable. In the past, there have been similar cases where producers and artists were tightly knit. Now, something similar has happened with Min Hee-jin and HYBE. Most people outside the industry don’t know the exact terms of the contract between Min Hee-jin and HYBE. As my own son works in the entertainment field, I’m well aware of how important it is to work with a good producer. For a company like HYBE, which has invested tens or even hundreds of billions of won, it’s unthinkable that they would allow NewJeans to separate and go independent after establishing their position. Many in the industry agree that this doesn’t make sense. To the general public, NewJeans might seem like the underdogs, and people might feel they should be allowed to leave. But from the perspective of the entertainment industry, which requires substantial capital to grow, the relationship between investors and artists is key. You can’t discuss this industry without acknowledging the role of investors. This case is different from situations where individual members leave, as seen in the past with groups that had Chinese members. This isn’t about a single member leaving; it’s more about the fact that, in this industry, the producers are as important as the artists themselves. From the beginning, NewJeans has been marketed as Min Hee-jin’s girl group, so the idea of them continuing without her feels different. We need to approach this from a different angle. That said, it doesn’t mean HYBE should completely cut ties. Many people have different initial thoughts about the situation, but the core issue here is the importance of the relationship between producers and the company, especially when substantial investment is involved. From my perspective, the fundamental question is: what exactly was attempted? I still find this unclear. In any company, it's common to hear people say, "I want to quit, I can't work with this boss, I'm leaving tomorrow." We all talk about this with friends or colleagues. Sometimes, we even ask others to let us know if there’s a good opportunity elsewhere. But actually submitting a resignation is a whole different issue. But in the new premise, I still wonder what exactly they were trying to do. What exactly was attempted? We always talk about it at work, right? "I'm going to quit. I can't work with that boss anymore. I'm leaving tomorrow." We always have those conversations. We talk about it with our friends, with team members, and even ask friends outside of work to let us know if they hear of any good positions. But actually submitting a resignation is a whole different issue, isn't it? Looking at how the situation first unfolded, it seems like HYBE was the one to bring things to light. They shared a lot with the press, and Min Hee-jin, the CEO, responded with a strong counterstatement. HYBE was saying, "Min Hee-jin is trying to do this and that," but CEO Min was like, "What else have I done apart from that message on KakaoTalk?" The court also judged that they weren't sure what actions had actually been attempted. To me, this seems like the fact of the matter. Clearly, HYBE's relationship with CEO Min Hee-jin might not be good. There could have been friction about how a subsidiary operates so independently from the parent company. There were likely various issues internally, but they should have been resolved within the company without making the problems visible externally. The fact that they let it spill outside before resolving it was a huge mistake on HYBE's part, revealing weaknesses in their management abilities. In my view, this has greatly devalued HYBE, becoming a powerful force that has dragged down their valuation. Throughout this process, HYBE displayed a level of immaturity, and the core of the issue became less important. The real concern for investors now is whether the company can effectively handle issues like these. Once this problem is resolved, can the remaining HYBE groups continue to grow securely? This business is all about reputation. HYBE is now seen as a company that ousts female CEOs simply because she didn't follow their orders. That perception leaves a lasting impression on people's minds, damaging the company's future operations. From an investor's perspective, two major incidents have happened in quick succession. The first was the boost in value during 2020 when HYBE sold a huge number of albums during COVID-19, creating the sense that the entertainment industry was Korea's next big sector. But then, this recent issue with Min Hee-jin, alongside BLACKPINK's contract situation, has put a serious damper on things. BLACKPINK didn't renew their contract as a group, and though they claim to continue working together in some capacity, it's not the same as before. YG Entertainment's profitability has plummeted, revealing how dependent they were on BLACKPINK. This has left investors wondering whether the entertainment business is just a limited-time, seven-year affair. If BLACKPINK had carried on smoothly into the next generation, it would have seemed like a sustainable business, and investors would have continued to trust in the long-term future of Korean entertainment. But now, we're seeing the cracks in that perception. It’s become a question of how to invest in a business with a lifespan of only seven years, when even the manufacturing industry lasts longer than that. The BLACKPINK incident and the NewJeans situation have both severely harmed investor confidence. HYBE's struggles with its artists are analogous to a manufacturing company facing a revolt from its workers. When investors look at this instability, they start questioning whether the business is even viable. The concept of sustainability has been seriously undermined, and the fact that the seven-year contract issue has been a long-standing concern doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. What used to reassure investors was the belief that when a seven-year contract ended, the company would already have the next seven years planned out, ready to sustain their business. That faith in the big entertainment companies has been shaken. Achieving the kind of success that BTS or BLACKPINK did is incredibly difficult, and passing the baton to the next generation is no simple task. Even though investors had faith that YG would produce another BLACKPINK-level group, now that trust is faltering. However, I do think people are now looking at contracts a bit differently. In the past, when a group disbanded, the members would scatter. But now, groups like BLACKPINK continue to work together even while pursuing solo projects. This shows that they understand the importance of sticking together, and I thought that this might help extend the longevity of these groups. But in reality, very few cases of disbanded groups have seen much success with individual members pursuing separate careers. There aren’t many examples where groups have stayed active for long, especially when individual members run into personal issues. Take Big Bang, for instance—they’ve been around for a while, but their personal scandals have made it hard for the group to recover fully. In the entertainment business, it’s rare for groups to last more than seven years, and age is also a factor. Once a group surpasses the seven-year mark, the members tend to be quite a bit older. With BTS, they need to show a fresh side if they’re to keep running strong. One of the most disheartening things mentioned by the members was that they didn’t feel respected. This ties into a larger issue in our society, as we're seeing with the national discussion around workplace bullying. If we think about how BTS achieved success, it's clear why this is such a serious issue. Back when BTS rose to fame, they shared how they weren’t from one of the top three agencies and positioned themselves as underdogs who worked hard to gain recognition. This resonated with many young people who felt that if you work hard enough, you can succeed, even without the backing of a major company. This message gave hope to many, not only in Korea but also globally. BTS’s fan base, especially in the U.S., includes many people who identify as outsiders, those who don’t feel they belong to the mainstream—whether in terms of race, culture, or social standing. For them, BTS was a source of inspiration, showing that you can still succeed even if you start from the margins. With NewJeans, though there’s talk about Min Hee-jin, the allegations of bullying within the company are hitting a sensitive nerve for fans. It’s unfortunate that the company allowed things to reach a point where such accusations were made. Even if the situation was mostly an internal conflict among the adults in charge, they should have handled it better to avoid involving the artists. In the past, we've seen similar issues, like with Big Bang’s various scandals, which were almost at the level of criminal activity. The current situation with NewJeans might not be as severe, but bullying and exclusion are still serious concerns. Ultimately, experiences like these can serve as valuable lessons for the entertainment industry. This situation has highlighted that the entertainment business is fundamentally about human relationships. From the artists to the products they create, everything revolves around people. The moment someone’s feelings are hurt or relationships are damaged, the entire business can collapse. The entertainment business is all about personal connections, something I've always believed. Recently, I heard about Naver Webtoon’s global success, and it's fascinating to think about how it has outgrown Kakao Webtoon, despite being a later player. Many factors contributed to this success, but someone mentioned that webtoons are also a "personal connection" business. Webtoon creators are tough to manage—they're artists, after all, and keeping them on schedule, especially with weekly deadlines, is a challenging task. CEO Kim Joong has managed to nurture relationships with these creators, making personal connections the backbone of the business. In the entertainment industry, particularly with idols, you can't overlook the importance of personal relationships. The key skill for managing this industry is the ability to connect deeply with both the creators and the artists. HYBE, for instance, doesn’t just need skilled managers who are good with finance or operations. What they truly need are people who can foster those personal relationships, especially when they’re dealing with artists as young as 13 or 15. It’s about ensuring that these young talents feel understood and cared for, so they can be inspired to do their best work. Managing young artists is tricky because their idea of success might be completely different from what adults think. A 13-year-old might not care about owning multiple houses—they might just want to spend time with their family or have the freedom to eat out whenever they want. The manager’s job is to tap into what motivates them and help them thrive in a way that’s meaningful to them. This kind of nurturing is not easy to scale. When a company grows too big, it’s challenging to maintain those close relationships. That's why multi-label approaches, like those seen in large entertainment agencies, are supposed to help. But if personal connections within those labels break down, the whole system can fall apart. This business model seems uniquely suited to Korea. It’s hard to imagine it working the same way in Japan, where there's a more hierarchical, command-driven structure. Japan's entertainment industry often depends on strong, central producers who direct everything. In contrast, Korean idols often rise through collective effort and personal connection, like BTS did. Despite the challenges, I believe Korea’s entertainment sector has room for long-term growth. Many of today’s youth are drawn to this field because it allows them to express their talents and passions. If scandals like the one with NewJeans continue to arise, however, it might dissuade some young people from pursuing these dreams. When you look at what NewJeans members have said, there’s not much to disagree with. They simply want to keep doing what they’ve always done and follow their own creative paths. Ensuring they have the freedom to do so can lead to even greater success. These days, if you ask middle or elementary school students what they want to be when they grow up, many of them will say they want to become idols or YouTubers. They believe that with enough effort, they can make it. The entertainment industry needs to be able to channel that passion and potential into something positive. If Min Hee-jin were to leave HYBE, it’s clear that many companies would be eager to work with her. She mentioned once that “everyone is crazy about money,” and I think that’s why there would be a long line of people wanting to meet with her if she decided to move on. Right now, for example, there are people in the entertainment industry, like CJ, who may not have fully established themselves, or even private investors, just waiting for an opportunity. Many of them are keeping an eye on Min Hee-jin leaving HYBE. This was evident during the recent Tokyo performance, where her creativity was on full display. It was incomparable. That’s why this situation is even more unfortunate. Some people say, "If it wasn’t for the money, how could that group have been created?" But I believe there are people who could have made it happen with or without money. That’s the crucial difference in this case. While I'm not an expert, I was touched by the process of recreating a hit song from a legendary Japanese female singer from the '80s. It felt like a major event. It was amazing because I had never seen anything like it before. Even though I wasn’t familiar with the original song, just seeing it was enough to draw in so much attention and make it feel like a historic moment. That’s what talent is—turning something simple, like a cover song, into a major event. I remember thinking, "How do the Japanese people feel about this?" because the crowd's reaction was incredible. The enthusiasm was surprising, and I wondered what they were thinking while watching it. This is the true power of Korean culture—it’s not just about promoting our own culture but also deeply resonating with others. The entertainment industry’s core business is making audiences happy and even obsessed. Min Hee-jin is undeniably a top-tier artist in this field. If she were to leave HYBE, there would be countless opportunities for her. But if HYBE mishandles this situation, it won’t just be about losing one person—it could destabilize everything. They really need to handle this carefully. As for stocks and investments, that's up to everyone’s individual decisions. We're just having a casual chat here about the entertainment industry. As someone with a child in the business and another who's analyzed the industry, we’re just relaxing with a casual discussion. So, let’s pour a drink and enjoy this conversation. Watch the full video:](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1842046662933610609/amplify_video_thumb/1842042079117246465/img/At1wmSEbkseQtgQZ.jpg)
![The Economics of Europe’s Descent into Warmongering – and our duty now! My speech at the European Parliament on the theme of “The Economic Conditions of Peace”, Tuesday 10th June 2025 [INTRODUCTION] A year ago, I would have started this speech with a lament about the hitherto unimaginable conversion of the European Union from a Peace to a War Project. Not so today. Over the past year, warmongering has seeped into the very fabric of the Union, it has trickled into every policy, it has soaked every one of the thinktanks that generate Europe’s dominant narratives and creeds. Today, therefore, it makes no sense to lament what is now a fact: The EU is now a fully-fledged War Project – a project that will either land us in permanent war, or it will bankrupt us further, or probably both! Europe’s military Keynesianism, I shall be arguing, is guaranteed to make Europe less safe, more unequal, weaker. Only two interesting questions remain: Why has Europe taken this road? And, now that Europe is on this war path, what is ourduty to our people, to Europeans, to Peace? Let me begin at the very beginning. [THE EU WAS DESIGNED TO BE SUBSERVIENT TO THE UNITED STATES] At the risk of irking Europeanists who believe in their own creation myth, let me be clear: The European Union (from its beginnings as the European Communities of Coal & Steel) was an American Construction – a part of a US Global Plan that also comprised the Bretton Woods System, the Truman Doctrine and, of course, NATO. Yes, most Europeans hankered for no more war and no more totalitarianism. But the EU was designed in Washington DC. And it was designed specifically not as a competitive market but as a Big Business Cartel run by a democracy-free bureaucracy (also known as the European Commission) not coincidentally located a stone’s throw from NATO’s headquarters. From 1950 on, the EU was nurtured by and in tune with the interests of the United States – an inconvenient fact both for Europe’s self-important rulers and for Donald Trump. Looking back, a common thread runs through the entire history of the EU: its total economic dependence on the United States. Initially, the EU was deeply dependent on being part of the Dollar Zone. Then, from 1971 onwards, it was deeply dependent on the American trade deficit. So, one way or another, Europe’s deep dependence on the US was ingrained into its architecture. It will thus take much more than mere pronouncements - or a few hundred billion borrowed euros spent on weaponry - to shed Europe’s in-built dependence on the United States. The fact that the EU was, from the beginning, fashioned as a Big Business Cartel is the reason why the EU needed fixed exchange rates: Currency fluctuations destabilise any cartel, making it hard to maintain the necessary levels of collusion between its participating producers. From 1950 to 1971, the US took care of this problem on Europe’s behalf. As long as it was running a trade deficit with the United States, Europe’s cartel was embedded in the dollar zone – its currencies tied to the dollar But, when around 1969 Europe (and Japan) started running a trade surplus with the United States, it was game over. On 15th August 1971, the Donald Trump of that era, President Richard Nixon, jettisoned Europe from the dollar zone, his Treasury Secretary cynically telling the dumbfounded Europeans: “From today the dollar is our currency but it is your problem!” Two things happened next. First, to save their Big Business Cartel the Europeans scrambled to create their own fixed exchange rate regime. They tried everything: The Snake. The European Monetary System. The European Exchange Rate Mechanism. They all proved flimsy designs that speculators had no trouble crushing. So, in desperation, they created the most noxious currency the human spirit could fashion - the euro. The second development was that, as America expanded its budget and trade deficits, the Eurozone morphed into a German-led net exporting machine whose aggregate demand was subcontracted to the United States. In effect, America’s twin deficits operated like a huge vacuum cleaner that sucked into America Europe’s net exports as well as the European exporters’ profits which were thus invested in US Treasuries, US shares and US real estate. That’s how, once it was expelled from the dollar zone, Europe became addicted to the US deficits. That was what the Nixon Shock did: It converted Europe’s utter reliance on living within the dollar zone into an even greater dependence on the US deficits. [NEVER MISSING A CHANCE TO MISS AN OPPORTUNITY] Here in Brussels they love the expression that Europe progresses from crisis to crisis. That’s another delusion. The crisis of 2008 was our greatest opportunity to render the European Union viable, and to end its deep dependence on the United States. · The French and German banks went bankrupt. · The Eurozone’s impossible rules were in tatters. · A domino effect, beginning with Greece, was bankrupting our governments. It was the perfect opportunity to transform the EU from a Big Business Cartel, inherently reliant on the US for its aggregate demand, into a functional, internally balanced federation. Instead, Europe’s radical centre (both the centre right and the centre left) decided that they would change everything so as to ensure that nothingchanges. In this vein, they did their worst: Universal austerity for the many. And frantic money printing for the financiers and Big Business. What happens when you crush the incomes of the many and hand over trillions to the very few? Since the many are too poor to buy high value added goods, business stops investing in productive capital –– while the rich use the free cash to push through the roof house prices, share prices, Bitcoin prices, art, asset prices in general. The natural result is soul-crushing levels of inequality and deep popular discontent. The people got desperate. They even voted for radical progressives like me to enter the Eurogroup! Then, in horror, Brussels and Frankfurt overthrew us, or made Mr Tsipras overthrow his own government, using not the tanks, as they did in Greece in 1967, but the banks – not that much of a difference really! A coup d’ état is a coup d’ état. [TWO SYMBIOTIC AUTHORITARIANISMS] Guess what happened next: Just as in the mid-war period, xenophobic ultra-rightists rose up from the woodwork. They proved a godsent for the shockingly unpopular radical centre whose politicians could now say to voters: It is us or them! But it was equally a godsent for the ultra-right who needed the radical centre to impose the austerity policies which created the discontent which fuelled the anger that delivered the ultra-right votes. To put it differently, if Macron and Le Pen had any sense, they would each keep a framed picture of the other on their bedside tables, saying a little prayer in their hated opponent’s name every night before going to sleep. [SMOKE AND MIRRORS] Liberal Totalitarianism and Ultra-Right-Xenophobic Totalitarianism are accomplices, they feed off each other. Meanwhile, austerity for the many and money printing for the few depletes Europe’s productive foundations, its social fabric, its sense of purpose. That’s how the European Union lost any legitimacy it had in the eyes of the public. Sensing this, the Liberal Totalitarians in charge came up with one failed Grand Initiative after another. Who can forget the eminently forgettable Juncker investment plan, the Banking Union, the Green Deal, or the Draghi Report that has now joined them in History’s Dustbin? Impressive numbers were announced that, alas, dependably failed to materialise. It was inevitable. As long as our rulers said NO to the political union that could sustain a proper, macroeconomically significant, eurobond, the money to fund the necessary investment could never materialise. Even when they – finally – during the pandemic – did issue common debt, they ended up with common liabilities but no common purpose. Every Grand Initiative ever announced was a dance with failure, smoke and mirrors by which they disguised Europe’s nakedness. The result? After fifteen years of ZERO NET PRODUCTIVE INVESTMENT, · Germany is deindustrialising fast, and along with it Eastern and Central Europe, Austria, Northern Italy · Political paralysis grows on the back of fiscal pressures · Neofascism and xenophobia are rising up everywhere · Europe’s dependence on the United States grows stronger at the time Donald Trump is cutting Europe loose · The Rest of the World looks at Europe as a sad case of what could have been, an irritating irrelevance. In this sad context, our great and good leaders had another woeful idea for a Grand Initiative: Now that the Green Deal is dead-in-the-water and the Recovery Fund is spent, why not try Military Keynesianism? [THE FOLLY OF MILITARY KEYNESIANISM] Ladies and Gentlemen, Military Keynesianism works in the United States because America has the federal institutions, the monetary sovereignty, the fiscal power, the technostructure, and the common procurement process that are essential in implementing Military Keynesianism. Europe has none of that, nor does it have leaders interested in acquiring any of that. This is why Military Keynesianism cannot work in Europe. Thank goodness it can’t work, I say! For if it could work, Europe would have to emulate the United States in starting a war every year so that the stocks of ammunition, missiles et al could be depleted sufficiently to justify the new colossal orders necessary to maintain Military Keynesianism. Nevertheless, while Europe’s Military Keynesianism cannot and should not work, it serves a purpose – it is a kind of a solution for, say, Volkswagen: Now that Volkswagen can no longer sell its cars, it hands over whole production lines to Rheinmetall to produce Leopard tanks which von der Leyen makes Greece and Italy buy even though we neither want nor need them. Yes, Military Keynesianism will fail Europe badly, but not before it further bankrupts our states and throws more fuel onto the fire burning down lives and dreams in Ukraine’s killing fields. So, let me be frank: · No really-existing enemy of Europe shakes in his boots watching a stagnating, heavily indebted Europe, invest billions in weaponry. Quite the opposite! · Military Keynesianism will end up as Europe’s New Austerity for the many and a new money spinner for the few. · It will make Europe weaker while prolonging the Ukraine War in a manner that is detrimental to the stated aim of supporting Ukraine. [EUROPE’S SURRENDER TO NATO, ITS ROLE IN UKRAINE] It is at this point that angry yelps will rise up from the press gallery. Can’t you hear them ask: "“Is Russia not ante portas?” “Is Europe not in danger?” “Should Europe remain defenceless, especially now that Trump is abandoning Europe?” My answer is clear: Weakening ourselves economically through a Military Keynesianism that constitutes the New Austerity which will, with mathematical precision, diminish Europe further is no way to make Europe stronger! And lest we forget, Europe already has 1.5m men and women in uniform while, over the past decade, we spent €2.7 trillion on defence – a period during which our net productive investment was zero! Now, NATO demands that we spend three times as much - which is totally insane, given how wastefully that €2.7 trillion was spent. In this light, surrendering our foreign and defence policies to NATO, and sinking further in unsustainable debt just to satisfy President Trump’s demands for more military spending, is the surest way of making Europe more dependent, less secure, uglier and sadder. In this context, the powers-that-be here in Brussels are anxiously trying to keep their jobs and boost their budgets by spreading the lie that NATO had to expand in order to deter Russian aggression – when it is exactly the other way round: Like the Mafia, NATO expanded to create insecurity in order to sell us protection! Does this mean that Putin was right to invade the Ukraine? Of course not. What it means is that NATO and Putin are accomplices – that they needed one another in their joint bid for a confrontation that strengthened both – at Europe’s expense. It also means that anyone truly interested in Europe’s security and prosperity 1. must dispel the lie that Russia is about to invade us – it can’t even if it wants to 2. must work tirelessly to kill Europe’s Military Keynesianism, and 3. must work toward a European Peace Process which uses Russia’s confiscated monies not as a piggybank for more useless Leopard tanks and Leonardo missiles but as a bargaining chip to end the Ukraine War in the context of a comprehensive EU-Russia Peace Treaty. As for the politicians in this town who will not rest until they see Russia on its knees, I have this to say to them: If you really wanted to weaken Russia, to bring Russia to its knees, you should have worked hard to admit Russia into the… Eurozone. In one fell swoop the euro would have wrecked Russia’s productive basis, it would have indebted its people and its state, it would have made its leaders rush to Brussels and to Frankfurt with begging bowl in hand! You think I am joking. But there is too much truth in this joke for comfort! To sum up my argument so far, Europe’s economic stagnation was the product of its total dependence on the American deficits. This dependence yielded Europe’s complicity with the decade-long American project of inciting a war in Ukraine. And now that the US is decoupling, our rulers – resembling decapitated chickens – are running around without their heads screwed on, struggling to find ways of continuing to impede Peace in Ukraine so as to use military funds to prop up Europe’s faltering Big Business Cartel. [WHAT’S BEHIND EUROPE’S ETHICAL DECAY: GAZA, TOTALITARIANISM] Ladies and Gentlemen, as we speak here today, Europe is falling headlong into another ethical void: complicity in the Palestinian genocide. It is not just the embarrassment, also known as Mrs Ursula von der Leyen, posing like a cheerleader of Israel’s genocidal army in front of its tanks hours before they stormed Gaza. No, the European Union is not merely complicit due to our subservience to the United States. No, the European Union is also enabling, it is in fact funding, the war criminals of its own accord. Directly. Cynically. With no compunction. · BNP PARIBAS and ALLIANZ underwrite the issues of the Israeli government bonds that fund the Israeli meatgrinder in the Palestinian Occupied Territories · MAERSK is the prime transporter of the military machine at work in Gaza · Since 2007, the European Union has channelled €2 billion of research funding to Israeli entities producing the means by which Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, targeted, murdered and maimed. But there is something even scarier going on: Some of our top institutions depend financially on backing Israel’s genocide. If Europe were to do its duty and sanction Israel, the Technical University of Munich stands to lose €195.4 million from the EU’s HORIZON program which funds the University to carry out joint research with Israeli institutions. Ladies and Gentlemen, Europe carries an enormous guilt. The pogroms against the Jews started here, in Europe. Europeans carried out genocides across Africa, in the Americas, in Australia. By forming the EU as a Peace Project, we claimed a chance to make amends for Europe’s past genocides. However, our dependence on the US and our ruling class’s penchant to profit from imperialism have made this impossible – and so Europe’s hands are, again, covered in the blood of innocents, in Gaza, in Ukraine, in the Sudan, in Libya, in Yemen, in Syria. It has also brought totalitarianism back into our midst, here in Europe. When the German authorities banned me from entering Germany for the crime of co-organising with German Jews a conference on the theme of ‘A Just Peace in the Middle East’, they were making a point: To them, letting the rivers of Palestinian blood flow unimpeded represented their chance of washing off their hands the guilt over the Holocaust, over the other German genocide in Namibia, of Belgium’s crimes against humanity in the Congo… It is, therefore, a clear warning to us: Economic stagnation begets warmongering which begets a revived European white settler mentality. This Europe has fallen so far into a moral crevice that it cannot easily climb out of it. Europe’s Liberal Totalitarianism, which we in Greece experienced in all its horror ten years ago, is now everywhere – and it is throwing wide open the gates through which Xenophobic Ultra-Right Totalitarianism arrives to darken our doorstep. The time to rise up against both forms of totalitarianism is now. On behalf of the peoples of Europe. [WHAT MUST WE DO?] So, what must we do? Let us begin by grasping that: · The economic condition for Peace is to de-couple Europe's economy from America's wars! · But for that we must end, once and for all, Europe’s dependence on the United States. · This entails ending Europe’s dependence on net exports to America. · Which means rebalancing Europe’s internal economy through o new productive green investments, o an end to structural austerity o an end to the madness of cartel-infested electricity ‘markets’ o a new monetary commons by which to end the bankers’ monopoly over payments and to institute a personal dividend for all o a new EU-China deal that liberates us from America’s agenda of intensifying a pointless New Cold War at our expense. Only by transforming Europe’s political economy can we end the never-ending fragmentation which breeds war, totalitarianism and the embarrassment of being led by cheerleaders of genocide and permanent war with Russia, like Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas. How can we accomplish that? In two ways. First, we need a Credible Plan for a Europe worth fighting for. Second, we must organise a campaign of civil and governmental disobedience in our countries and, potentially, in the European Council until our Plan for Europe gets a chance. We, DiEM25, have worked for a decade on this Plan – our Green New Deal for Europe – and are happy to share it with you, so that you can refine, revise, adapt it. You, the 5S Movement and other parties eager to partake across Europe, have the organisation that we lack so that, together with our MERA25 transnational parties, we can together help organise the campaign of civil and governmental disobedience without which nothing will change, nothing will impede Europe’s, Italy’s, Greece’s, indeed Germany’s secular decline. [CONCLUSION] So, to conclude, seventy-five years of this European Union teach us that we face a stark choice. A choice between a Dependent-on-the-United States, Warmongering, Stagnating Europe. Or an Independent, Non-Aligned, Prosperous, Green Europe. A choice between a von der Leyen-type Commission that greenlights genocide, impedes Peace, illegally deletes her Pfizer chat history, lobbies for Lockheed Martin, and borrows money we can’t repay to buy weaponry we do not need - while condemning People and Planet to impecunity. Or European Institutions optimised against raw power and in favour of common prosperity. A choice between being at the beck and call of the boardrooms of Rheinmetall, Leonardo and Pfizer, blind to the tax havens where war profits and tax fraud hide, while our coastguards turn refugees into corpses. Or a Europe of rational, that is a radical, humanism. To even have this choice, our immediate task must be to end war, to end genocide and to terminate before it is too late the New Austerity going by the name of Military Keynesianism.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1933459747866316884/amplify_video_thumb/1933456380167364608/img/Up__hbhEoJPhHmsi.jpg)
![Apple’s iPad “Crush” Ad Is Bleak, Ominous and Threatening I don’t know if you’ve seen Apple’s just-released commercial for the “New” iPad Pro, but it’s pretty awful. It is dark, humorless, and feels like a not-so-thinly veiled threat to writers, musicians, game makers, developers, and artists of all kinds. …and children, even. I’ve watched it at least five times today alone, and I’m left with one big question. “Who on earth approved this?” It’s absolutely baffling that the world’s largest technology company, with the world’s biggest marketing budget, thought this would be a good idea. What kind of idiot—or idiots, since dozens or hundreds of people had to be involved in the writing, staging, producing, recording, and editing—felt this kind of ad would somehow create a positive emotional connection with consumers? Seriously, it’s terrifying. In a dank, cold warehouse, devoid of all life and humanity, an industrial crusher comes to life, and slowly starts destroying a collection of musical, philosophical, and artistic devices and instruments. For no apparent reason, everything starts getting smashed: first, a trumpet, then an arcade video game, then cans of paint, a piano, a globe, a metronome, a guitar… on and on it goes, obliterating everything in sight into a colorful, gooey, explosive mess. Books, camera lenses, lamps, a guitar, a sculpture, and a typewriter—all tools of the liberal arts—get mangled into a garbage heap as Sonny & Cher cheerfully sing, “All I ever need is you.” In the penultimate moment, a goofy yellow smiley emoji becomes a bug-eyed scary-clown freak as it, too, is crushed to death. Worse, if you enable closed captions like I do by default, the video says: “[POPPING] [SPLAT]” right as its eyeballs pop out of its head when Cher sings, “Give me a reason to build my world around you.” It’s enough to make a child cry. It has all the comforting vibes of the burnt pink teddy bear floating in the swimming pool on Breaking Bad after two planes crash in mid-air. I have so many questions (aside from simply wondering the names of the soon-to-be ex-employees who greenlit this abomination). First of all, as a trumpet player myself, I am personally offended that they made me watch a perfectly good trumpet get smashed to smithereens like it’s no big deal. Why would they torture me like this? Second of all, what is the message here? No, not that “the most powerful iPad ever is also the thinnest,” as the voiceover artist states in the last few seconds of the clip. I mean: what is the message? Ostensibly, pulverizing children’s toys, arcade games, architectural models, and ceramic Angry Birds into a paste implies something like “We’re taking all the best of humanity; all the collective works of Western Civilization, smashing it into pieces and putting it inside this remarkably thin device so you can have all of it in the palm of your hand.” But my oh my, is there an elephant in this room… he’s hiding behind the monstrous destroying machine. Did anyone inside Apple realize that everyone outside Apple will recognize this imagery in a metaphorical sense, but not the one Apple intended? We don’t see a crushing machine gently consolidating the greatest output of all our artistic endeavors, simply reformatted for a digital age and consumed by everyone with instant, fingertip access. We see what is painstakingly obvious to us, and the timing couldn’t possibly be worse. We see a giant, soulless machine consuming our work in a very different way. Right now, AI models are training themselves on our intellectual property and even our very own personally-identifying data. We aren’t the ones doing the consuming. We’re the ones being consumed. The tech industry has become one massive gaping maw, opening wide and swallowing everything in sight, chewing it up into little bits and pieces of comminuted waste, like a paper shredder or a garbage disposal. It’s destruction in its most literal form. And for what? For a newer version of the iPad that is only slightly thinner than its predecessor? For an only marginally improved version of Apple’s tablet device that has been around for 14 years? For increased profits? This is a terrible look for Apple. They may as well be saying: “All your work are belong to us.” Personally, I am a fan of artificial intelligence. I am eagerly embracing our robot overlords and I welcome our new CSV god (as the actual developers of AI models like to say). I look forward to the freedom and innovation that will come as a result of humanity augmenting our intelligence with AI like a force multiplier on a battlefield. But if Apple has the same perspective I do, they’re selling it in the worst possible way. When I see this video, I see that Apple is definitely crushing something… but I’m not sure what. -Crushing small companies that develop apps for the extremely heavy-handed App Store, which imposes byzantine restrictions on what they can and can’t do with their own apps? -Crushing competitors by limiting what they can do on the iOS and MacOS platforms with arbitrary and capricious rules about enabling functionalities that Apple doesn’t like, even if users do? -Crushing publishers and content creators with a punitive 30% fee on all subscriptions and in-app purchases? -Crushing choice and competition by not allowing app makers to make apps and programs that do the same thing that native apps already do, even if they do it better? -Crushing all human creativity and innovation by automating and systematizing everything? In the early days of the “Google vs. Apple” fight over the web and app stores, I was really concerned that Google was becoming way, way too powerful. Specifically, in 2015, when Google came up with “app streaming,” they announced a desire to form a “web of apps.” This was concerning. Especially when coupled with Google’s efforts to steal content from other websites and provide it to users via the “knowledge graph” results, ending up with the creation of “zero-click” search results pages, which absolutely punished website owners and content creators. By taking the most valuable content off a website and showing it to Google users without them needing to click through to the website itself, Google had essentially stolen everybody’s intellectual property with only the most minimal attribution possible (to fend off lawsuits no doubt, but with no intention of users actually visiting the website in question anymore). “Google is eating the internet,” I thought, and said out loud, (although I probably wasn’t the first person to use that phrase) But what I meant was purely an analogy. It was vague and ambiguous, almost silly. Maybe I was wrong, though: maybe it’s Apple that’s doing the eating. Maybe Apple is not only gobbling up everyone else’s work, but also homogenizing it—and us—and forcing us to use their platform, pay their fees, abide by their rules, and constantly keep upgrading, upgrading, upgrading, to an ever-thinner iPad in order to use it. Watch the video again. This is the stuff of nightmares. To be perfectly fair, even if I were to take the commercial at face value and ignore it’s off-the-charts creepiness and just stick to its one stated claim—that the new iPad Pro is thinner—it still fails as a commercial. Why? Because nobody cares how thin an iPad is. Seriously. I’ve owned an iPad since 2010: that means I’ve carried around a version of Apple’s already-thin tablet every day for over a dozen years. Never once have I said to myself: “You know what improvement I’d really like to see in this thing? I wish it were thinner.” Never. That thought has never crossed my mind, even once. You know what has? -Better battery life. -I’d like my iPad to not get hot to the touch when I use the Apple Pencil to take notes. -I wish it wasn’t so fragile: I dropped my brand-new iPad 2 back in the day when it slipped out of the arm-hold I was carrying it in, it bounced on the pavement, and the screen shattered into a thousand pieces, making it unusable. -I wish it had more storage. -I wish Apple would stop changing the type of cable connector it uses: I’ve gone from the original 30-pin connector to the Lightning connector, and now to the current USB-C/Thunderbolt connector. -I wish I could view the screen in direct sunlight. -I wish it wouldn’t overheat and turn off automatically when I use it outdoors in the summertime. Those are announcements I would welcome in a new iPad Pro commercial. None of this “now even thinner” nonsense nobody needs or cares about. So, back to the commercial. In my opinion, whoever made this ad should be fired. I almost never say that about other companies, especially for good-faith marketing efforts gone wrong… those of us who work in marketing make mistakes sometimes, and we learn from them. But cases like this warrant a special exception. Marketing and advertising are designed to make people want to buy your products. This commercial doesn’t just not make me want to buy Apple’s products. It makes me not want to buy Apple’s products, which is something altogether different. It turns me from someone who likes iPads into someone who is almost rethinking iPads entirely. That’s not just a bad advertisement; it’s a harmful advertisement. Apple’s usually known for great commercials. The legendary 1984 Super Bowl commercial was, of course, their best. I thought “Hello, I’m a Mac” was absolutely brilliant. They have made some missteps along the way, but this one is really bad. Not even their nauseatingly preachy and woke “Mother Nature” ad from a few years ago was this bad. Steve Jobs once said, “Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.” My goodness, that last line alone is poetry itself! This ad seems to be Apple signaling that they don’t believe in that anymore. And I don’t think all this handwringing is an overreaction to where you could say “Oh, c’mon, it’s just a commercial! What’s the big deal?” It is a big deal. It tells you about the values of the company, and what they intend to communicate. Really, how is this the same company that used to sell iPhones by showing grandmas using FaceTime to connect with their baby grandchildren from afar during the holidays? Everything about it is wrong: even the thumbnail they chose for it (the bulging-eyed smiley face) and the fact that they gave it the title “Crush!” It was fun to see the reactions to the video online today. I find it fascinating that Apple shared it on YouTube but turned off the comments. On X, Tim Cook shared it Tuesday, and the video, which so richly deserves to be mocked, is getting it in spades. Some people are calling it “anti-art.” One user called it “soul-crushing,” which was about as literal and logical a response as you’d expect. It turns out Apple actually made an announcement about the commercial. In response to the (apparently unexpected) poor welcome it got, Apple wrote: “We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.” Lame response from a tone-deaf tech behemoth, but still, they hopefully got the message. C’mon, Apple. I have seen the future, and this ain’t it.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1788740167194579387/media/GNLjSOOaEAAZ6VT.jpg)
![[NINE HEART PICKS] Hyein's First Impression of Minji_ 😳 From pre-debut practice room memories to her current performances on stage, Hyein shares nine personally selected memories 🖤 🐹: Hello Dazed! This is Hyein from NewJeans. I just finished a Dazed photoshoot, and I can’t wait for you to see the collaboration between Louis Vuitton, Dazed, and myself. Please look forward to it! Today, I’ll be sharing my 9 Heart Picks—nine unforgettable memories, moments, or scenes from before my debut to my current activities. This has been such a meaningful day for me because when we released the Supernatural album, I had the amazing opportunity to collaborate with Takashi Murakami, which was such a happy experience. Now, with another incredible chance to collaborate with Louis Vuitton for this photoshoot, I feel truly happy and deeply honored. 💬 You attended the Louis Vuitton show yesterday—was there a moment that stood out to you? 🐹: I took pictures with Bae Doona-nim. I was so happy. And when she told me how much she supports us, it was such a heartwarming moment. 💬 What standard did you use to prepare today’s 9 memories? 🐹: I prepared this without a fixed standard, more like following a personal timeline. So, I’ll present it that way. First, I chose ‘trainee.’ I was the last one to join and become part of the team as a trainee. What still leaves the strongest impression on me is when I first saw the older members—how could there be such beautiful and angelic people? They were so kind, pure, and innocent. And, of course, they were incredibly beautiful, as expected. Back then, everyone had such youthful and delicate energy compared to now. They were all so cute, and it was really meaningful to live together, train together, and prepare for one goal as a group. 💬 Who made the strongest first impression on you? 🐹: Minji-unnie! During the trainee period, there was a particularly tough time for us called the ‘monthly evaluation’ period. It’s a time when we have to perform what we’ve prepared in front of an audience. It was just before one of those evaluations, and I remember Minji-unnie wearing a black hoodie, sitting in a spinning chair in front of her computer, and looking so serious and a bit intimidating. I actually mentioned this to her later, and she said that she was really stressed out during that time and might have seemed scary because of it. That moment left such a strong impression on me. The second memory I’ll choose is summer. The reason it’s summer is that we debuted on July 22. When we debuted, the members and I all gathered in the dorm to watch the “Attention” music video together. We didn’t release any teasers or previews beforehand, so we were just waiting for the music video to come out, and we all watched it together in the living room. There are moments in life where you don’t realize how precious they are at the time, right? But that particular moment really hit me. I felt, Ah, this is such a special time. It was one of those moments where you could truly feel its significance. That’s why I chose it. Since the first one was summer, I’ll go with winter for the second. When I think of winter, the first thing that comes to mind is “Ditto.” Despite being a winter activity, it felt incredibly warm. It was our second comeback, and the music video had a rich storyline featuring a character named Ban Hee-soo. That character represents Bunnies, our fans. It was our first comeback with a music video that directly included Bunnies, and the whole preparation process felt like we were doing it together with them, making it a meaningful activity. Also, the song “Ditto” itself is so special. Every time I listen to it, it has this way of making my heart feel full and warm. It’s a song that turns winter into something cozy, so I chose our “Ditto” and “OMG” promotions as a special winter memory. 💬 What song do you listen to the most? 🐹: As for the songs I frequently listen to, I mostly play tracks from our recent album. But aside from those, I listen to "Ditto" quite often. For the fourth one… I’ll choose Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton… Oh, I see our team giving me a look, ㅋㅋㅋ. But it’s not just because this is a Louis Vuitton shoot. There are just so many precious memories I’ve made with Louis Vuitton. From the very first moment I got involved with Louis Vuitton, I’ve had the opportunity to experience things I would never have dreamed of if not for this partnership. For example, I got to visit Paris to attend their fashion show and witness the incredible presentations of a brand with such a long and rich history. Those experiences were truly invaluable. Even the photoshoots were such exciting and happy moments for me. So, I’m incredibly grateful to Louis Vuitton for everything. For the fifth one… Ah, what should I choose for the fifth? I’ll go with people. Why? Well, looking back, I’ve realized just how many amazing adults and wonderful people I’ve had around me. Especially recently, I’ve really felt grateful for the good people in my life. And of course, that includes Bunnies. The relationship we have with Bunnies feels so unique to me. I’d love to meet them more often, have more conversations, and connect with them on a deeper level. But there are so many reasons and times when that’s not possible. Even so, it’s truly amazing how much they continue to support and love us. I’m so thankful for that. Thank you! So, I chose people. The sixth is the stage. We had our second fan meeting at Tokyo Dome, and what really struck me at that time was how much the five of us were genuinely enjoying the stage. Seeing so many people who came to watch the performance enjoying themselves and sharing in the effort we poured into preparing the stage made me feel so proud. It gave me the feeling of, "Wow, something I love and worked hard on is being loved by so many people." That’s why each moment on stage is etched deeply in my memory. The seventh is preciousness. During "How Sweet" and "Supernatural" promotions, we really gave it our all. The choreography was made incredibly challenging, and the songs were amazing as well. While preparing so hard, I ended up getting injured, maybe because I pushed myself too much. After the injury, I found myself spending a lot of time alone, which gave me a chance to look after the members more closely. They’re such a team that just watching them makes me smile. I didn’t realize it before, but watching them made me laugh, and I found myself wanting to see their performances in person. So, in a way, the time I spent injured and observing from a different perspective turned out to be a necessary moment for me. When you’re just running forward, you don’t always realize what you’re doing. But after the injury, I had time to reflect and remind myself why we’re doing all of this. The eighth is something very obvious: Bunnies. That’s because ever since our debut, Bunnies have been with us in every single moment. That’s why I chose Bunnies. Among the times I’ve shared with Bunnies, there have been so many moments filled with happiness, sadness, excitement, and a range of emotions, which is why I picked Bunnies. Lastly, Dazed! This was my first time working with Dazed, and wow! Today’s photoshoot was so much fun, and the Dazed team was so warm and kind. Thank you so much for treating me so well—it was such a happy time. Please look forward to the Dazed photoshoot featuring Louis Vuitton collections by Takashi Murakami. I hope you love it and check it out a lot. Thank you! Today, I shared 9 memorable moments from my time with NewJeans. What are your favorite Hyein moments? #jeanzforfree #혜인 #Hyein #ヘイン #HyeinxLouisVuitton #LVxMurakami](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1879805401472074225/amplify_video_thumb/1879803889358401536/img/m36Kp-NVqxMXc9xV.jpg)
