Noam Chomsky, the renowned US academic, author and political activist, speaks to Avi Lewis on Al Jazeera's Inside USA.

They discuss whether the US election this year will bring real change, the ongoing conflict in Iraq and why Americans should look to their Southern American counterparts for political inspiration.

Avi Lewis: I'd like to start by talking about the US presidential campaign. In writing about the last election in 2004, you called America's system a "fake democracy" in which the public is hardly more than an irrelevant onlooker, and you've been arguing in your work in the last year or so that the candidates this time around are considerably to the right of public opinion on all major issues.

So, the question is, do Americans have any legitimate hope of change this time around? And what is the difference in dynamic between America's presidential "cup" in 2008 compared to 2004 and 2000?

Noam …