"They won 50.5% of the vote when only 5% of the U.S. population voted; many polled were against the Contract With America scheme which increases defence spending and slashes social services," Chomsky revealed later.

He believes that America has never been a true democracy, but rather one ruled by aristocrats, which Adam Smith and even Founding Father Thomas Jefferson warned about.

"Apart from the trans-national companies which are beyond national policies, we have de-facto governments and bureaucracies like NATO, the EC, the World Court, G-7 nations and various trade blocs. The current system is more like corporate mercantilism than true democracy."

Prominent Australian right wing media critic Gerald Henderson called this assertion "another of Chomsky's fashionable conspiracy theories," without realising that Chomsky was actually quoting information from The Financial Times.

Chomsky told me, "Under free enterprise the public bears the cost of subsidising technological industries. Under the military economy in the 1950s, computers were subsidised by the tax payer, but if anything comes out, its handed over to corporations. Boeing was helped by World War II and by publicly funded contracts during the 1950s, which helped the firm grow. Now it has to barter 20% of its planes because they're so expensive."

After arriving in Melbourne I caught a taxi into the CBD with three backpackers holidaying here from England. None of them had heard of Noam Chomsky. But their first sight of the city's environs were hordes of posters advertising Chomsky's upcoming keynote address.

I wished for exile from the strange reality of the campaign trail, now privately dubbed 'Chomskyland'.

According to sources inside DFAT, Senator Gareth Evans approved the recent arms sales "without enthusiasm." Senator Evans was unable to speak to me directly about the matter, as he was negotiating a lucrative trade deal with Cuba, but his views were summed up in an address given at the AIIA National Conference on 'Indonesia', Canberra, Friday, November 25, 1994.

In the transcript, Sen. Evans reveals:

"1995 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the events which brought the New Order government into existence in 1965," conveniently failing to mention the 500,000 deaths in the coup or the diplomatic mention by U.S. officials in 1958 that Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the region was "a trouble spot."

Senator Evans frequently refers to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that Australia signed, but although he realises that, "East Timor is the most sensitive issue . . . I stress to our many friends in the Indonesian Government, including senior members of the military . . . to promote genuine reconciliation with the East Timorese people. The issue can no longer be avoided. We have been prepared to accept that since 1979 that Indonesia has full sovereignty over East Timor . . . but a further measure of self determination . . . is achievable within that framework."

Cutting through the deceitful diplomatic language, the message is frighteningly clear, particularly when Senator Evans mentions the fact that "Indonesia will be the world's fifth largest economy by the year 2020."

Australia's direct investment of over $2.5 billion, and the rights of the 180 Australian companies operating in Indonesia are more important than really tackling the problem. ASEAN and APEC conferences are just fancy public relations exercises. Sen. Evan's Labor Unity faction seemingly prefers treaties to supporting war, but this doesn't hide its complicity in the matter.

The diplomatic communiques made no reference to extensive deforestation and other environmental damage done to the East Timorese economy, or the mandatory conscription of East Timorese citizens into the Indonesian armed forces to fight the resistance. A failure to mention the capture in November 1992 of FRETELIN leader Xanana Guasmo, who is serving a 20 year sentence in a Jakarta prison after a 'trial' for leading the valiant resistance movement, despite what John Pilger describes as "a genocidal policy . . . that resulted in a land of crosses."

Resettlement villages, surveillance of families, enforced famines and other methods of internal thought control aren't revealed. Senator Evans whitewashed the events after the collapse of the Salazarist regime in Portugal, distorting Gough Whitlam's close relationship with President Suharto and fears of East Timor becoming a base for communist insurgency. By doing so he stands to help gain control of the 250 km Timor Gap and an estimated seven billion barrels worth of oil.

Chomsky's political activism has notably influenced the music industry. The San Francisco nexus of bands, which included artists from Jello Biafra's Alternative Tentacles label, Consolidated, Meat Beat Manifesto, and the now defunct Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, often sampled soundbites, quoted him in press releases or referred to his media propaganda model during concerts in the early 1990s.

David Thrussell, outspoken front-person for the Melbourne based techno terrorists Snog explained to me that, "There is a large indication that the centre of fascism moved from Berlin to Washington at the end of World War II, particularly with the survival of the original Nazi hierarchy. Our music attempts to cut through the thick veil of flashy public relations to show the reality that the world is becoming more fascist - the recent rise of neo-Nazism and multi-nationals are obvious examples. The scary thing is that most people don't question the daily injustices that occur around them, and realise whats happening! I draw inspiration from Chomsky's scathing analysis of American foreign policy, plus the works of John Pilger, John Carpenter and Robert Anton Wilson."

The band's press release for their latest album Dear Valued Customer (Polygram, 1994) puts Chomsky on a Further Reading List, but states ambiguously that "Snog appropriates the social dissertations of dissident academics and journalists, transforming them into aphoristic idea sound bites as an expedient alternative to critical illumination."

Over his six day stay in Sydney, Chomsky spoke on a variety of topics apart from his keynote address on East Timor and discussions on Democracy, Markets and the NWO. He discussed the recent Israeli-Palestinian peace accord and prospects for stability in the Middle East at Macquarie University, spoke at the Inaugural Sydney Festival on "The Writer and Intellectual Responsibility", and discussed his linguistics work. But most prominent was an address at the "Visions of Freedom" Anarchist's Conference, ironically held at the Sydney Town Hall.

A source at Black Rose Books, the conference's promoter and publisher of Chomsky's work outlined further the theory of anarcho-syndicalism.
"It's existed for about 100 years, and reached its practical height during the 1936 Spanish Civil War when workers organised their own police force, worker's council and other social structures. It's revolutionary unionism on anarchist lines - unlike the present situation. We have a non-hierarchal structure in mind - workers along industrial lines elect delegates, usually from each individual workplace. The delegates have no power themselves, but operate on mandates from the workers."

His voice verged on being fanatical, but I tired of the ideology being fed to me down the phone line by a political junky, and turned instead to a statement from the Achbar/Wintonick film by Chomsky that was quoted in the publicity material: "It's a federated, decentralised system of free associations incorporating economic as well as social institutions . . . It's appropriate for an advanced technological society . . . Human beings do not have to be forced into the position of tools, of being cogs in a machine."