Pakistan drifting away from science: Noam Chomsky

KARACHI: Today’s generation faces questions that have never been raised before in the human history, world-renowned intellectual and social critic, Noam Chomsky, said Monday.

"These questions are a burden and a challenge," said Chomsky, a speaker at a virtual session — part of the Habib University’s flagship Yohsin Lecture Series — and who last visited Pakistan nearly 20 years ago.

In the lecture titled "Bullet Dodged or Merely Delayed: Reflections on the Future of Democracy, Nuclear Proliferation and the Looming Environmental Catastrophe in a Post-Trumpian World," he spoke of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, saying the world would come out of it "at a very terrible and unnecessary cost".

Praising South Korea for its fight against COVID-19, he remarked that the United States, India, and Brazil had not fared well against the deadly illness.

"The American people fell victim to right-wing propaganda," the political activist said before noting that China — with which the US is engaged in an intense tussle — was in the critical stages of testing the coronavirus vaccine.