Almost two years have passed since Lee O-young, the great Korean thinker and eminent culture critic, sadly passed away. Last month, Minumsa published his last words in book form under the title, “Reading Lee O-young: Civilization, Culture, and Literature in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Life Capitalism.” In that book, Lee left some invaluable wisdom and insights to his readers who felt lost in the whirlpool of today’s shallow social atmosphere full of fake news and gra

The Americans, the Israelis and the Palestinians are in a bind. No one knows who will govern Gaza after a cease-fire, when it comes. The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank city of Ramallah is not willing to enter Gaza on the back of Israeli tanks and without the agreement of Palestinian fighters there. No one else will either. Jordan’s prime minister has categorically denied that his country would play such a role, and the same will hold for almost any other Arab or international forc

Last August, more than two months after Ukraine began its counteroffensive against Russian positions in the east, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan was asked about whether the war was degenerating into a stalemate. Sullivan’s answer: no. “We do not assess that the conflict is a stalemate,” he said at the time. “We are seeing (Ukraine) continue to take territory on a methodical, systematic basis.” Fast-forward to today, and the cautious optimism cited by US

“They could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.” Israeli President Isaac Herzog ought to know better than to have said that. But those who don’t -- those who had no call to pay attention to Palestinian politics until a month ago -- might be forgiven for asking why Hamas has never faced a serious uprising from within their Gazan redoubt in the 17 years it has ruled the strip. That it has not allows some, in

Last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken headed for the Middle East to try to keep Israel's war in Gaza from spinning out of control, and to begin talks on what diplomats call "the day after" -- what happens after the shooting stops. Who will govern a shattered Gaza? Who will feed and house its refugees? Who will police its ravaged streets? And perhaps improbably, can the war, however brutal its toll, be turned into an opening for a wider peace? "When this crisis is ov

“What is it you don’t understand? She’s dead, dead, dead.” That is how David Durand, Chief Medical Officer of Oakland’s Children’s Hospital, attempted to convince the family of Jahi McMath that the standard medical tests for brain death had shown that their teenage daughter was no longer alive. The family stood firm in opposing this view, and the hospital eventually allowed them to take her to New Jersey, the only US state that requires hospitals to accommodat

I spent much of my professional life deployed forward in the Arabian Gulf and encountered Iranian naval forces there on many occasions. They were uniformly unprofessional, confrontational, and clearly seized with making life as difficult as possible for both legitimate merchant shipping and naval warships from the many nations with whom the Iranians have intractable differences. They are cowardly in the face of opposing military forces, but dangerous and unpredictable. As I watch the situation i

The 1991 American science fiction film, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” teaches us one valuable lesson: “Appearances are deceiving.” In the movie, a man in a police uniform is, in fact, a T-1000 advanced cyborg that is a ruthless killing machine. Conversely, the man dressed like a motorcycle gangster, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a good cyborg whose mission is to protect John Connor, the future leader of the human resistance against the Artificial Intelligence that t