The biggest scandal of the election campaign

The biggest scandal of the election campaign is going unreported, for the most part, by the mainstream newspapers and TV shows. Imagine if John McCain or Sarah Palin had a half-brother who was living in a hut. Imagine if McCain, a multimillionaire, did nothing to help the guy. Imagine if McCain came to the convention and spoke incessantly about compassion and how he was inspired by the biblical mandate: we are our brothers’ keepers! This would be the lead story on the evening news.

So why aren’t the networks covering the fact that Barack Obama’s half-brother George lives in a 6 by 10 foot hut in the slums of Kenya? It took a reporter for the Italian edition of Vanity Fair to locate George Obama. Obama noted that when he met his famous half-brother in 2006 “we spoke for just a few minutes. It was like meeting a complete stranger.” George Obama also told the magazine that “I live here on less than a dollar month,” and “if anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed.” Obama has done absolutely nothing to help his unfortunate half-brother.

We found Barack Obama's half-brother living in a Nairobi slum.

George Obama says he is sure his half-brother will win the U.S. presidency in November.

George Obama, whose birth certificate shows that he is Barack Obama's half-brother, lives in a small house in Huruma that he shares with his mother's extended family, far away from the presidential campaign circus.

In his memoir, "Dreams for my Father," the Democratic presidential candidate describes meeting George as a "painful affair." Barack Obama's trip to Kenya meant meeting family he had never known.

In the book, which is popular in Nairobi and can be found in almost any supermarket, Obama looks back at his personal story and his struggles to reconcile with a Kenyan father who left him and his mother when he was just a child.

Barack Obama Sr. died in a car accident when George was just 6 months old. And like his half-brother, George hardly knew his father. George was his father's last child and had not been aware of his famous half-brother.

"I think I wanted to learn about my father the same way he did," George Obama told me about why he read the book. "He came here searching for his roots, and I was also trying to find my roots."

Unlike his grandmother in Kogela, in Western Kenya, George Obama had received little attention from the media.

But reports surfaced in the past few days, springing from an Italian Vanity Fair article saying George Obama is living in a shack and "earning less than a dollar a day."

The reports left him angry.

"I was brought up well. I live well even now," he said. "The magazines, they have exaggerated everything.

"I think I kind of like it here. There are some challenges, but maybe it is just like where you come from, there are the same challenges," Obama said.

Obama, who is in his mid-20s, is learning to become a mechanic and is active in youth groups in Huruma. He said he tries to help the community as much as he can.

At least one of his neighbors feels that perhaps the candidate should help the brother.

"I would like Obama to visit his brother to see how he is living, to improve his way of life," said Emelda Negei, who runs a small dispensary near Obama's house.

But George Obama will have none of it. He draws inspiration from his famous half-brother. He acknowledges that he is biased but said he knows that his half-brother will be the next president.

"Because he wants to be [president]," he said. "I think in life, what you want is what you are supposed to get."

George Hussein Onyango Obama, Senator Barack Obama's long lost brother was tracked down living in a hut on the outskirts of Nairobi Photo: Guy Calaf, Vanity Fair, Italy

The Italian edition of Vanity Fair said that it had found George Hussein Onyango Obama living in a hut in a ramshackle town of Huruma on the outskirts of Nairobi.

Mr Obama, 26, the youngest of the presidential candidate's half-brothers, spoke for the first time about his life, which could not be more different than that of the Democratic contender.

"No-one knows who I am," he told the magazine, before claiming: "I live here on less than a dollar a month."

According to Italy's Vanity Fair his two metre by three metre shack is decorated with football posters of the Italian football giants AC Milan and Inter, as well as a calendar showing exotic beaches of the world.

Vanity Fair also noted that he had a front page newspaper picture of his famous brother - born of the same father as him, Barack Hussein Obama, but to a different mother, named only as Jael.

He told the magazine: "I live like a recluse, no-one knows I exist."

Embarrassed by his penury, he said that he does not does not mention his famous half-brother in conversation.

"If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed," he said.

For ten years George Obama lived rough. However he now hopes to try to sort his life out by starting a course at a local technical college.

He has only met his famous older brother twice - once when he was just five and the last time in 2006 when Senator Obama was on a tour of East Africa and visited Nairobi.

The Illinois senator mentions his brother in his autobiography, describing him in just one passing paragraph as a "beautiful boy with a rounded head".

Of their second meeting, George Obama said: "It was very brief, we spoke for just a few minutes. It was like meeting a complete stranger."

George added he was no longer in contact with his mother and said:"I have had to learn to live and take what I need.

"Huruma is a tough place, last January during the elections there was rioting and six people were hacked to death. The police don't even arrest you they just shoot you.

"I have seen two of my friends killed. I have scars from defending myself with my fists. I am good with my fists."

The photograph shows a young, unsmiling man standing in front of a jagged fence built from scraps of timber and rusted bits of corrugated metal.

The 26-year-old man is outside his shanty home on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya.

He survives on less than $1 a month.

He says he is Barack Obama's half-brother.

"I live like a recluse," George Hussein Onyango Obama says in an article published in the latest edition of the Italian-language Vanity Fair. "No one knows I exist."

While the junior Illinois senator is plotting a course for the White House, his half brother lives in an African shanty, the article says.

Barack Obama has written and spoken often about his Kenyan roots and his half-siblings.

In the book Dreams from My Father, Obama identified eight half-brothers and sisters from four other marriages or relationships of his parents. George was the youngest, the only child of Obama's father and a woman not named in the book.

Barack Obama wrote of a brief meeting with George during a trip to Kenya in the late 1980s. The visit outside the boy's school "turned out be a painful affair, arranged hastily and without the mother's knowledge." Barack Obama described a "handsome, round-headed boy with a wary gaze."

George Obama says he was that 5-year-old boy, according to the Vanity Fair piece. George Obama says he remembers little of the meeting.

George Obama says he again saw his famous half-brother two years ago, when Obama traveled to Africa with his wife and daughters.

"It was a short meeting," George Obama recalled. "We spoke to each other. It was odd -- like meeting a stranger."

Barack Obama's campaign had no comment on the Vanity Fair piece.

Based on the article, it appears George Obama has more pressing concerns than his half-brother's presidential bid.

George Obama showed the Vanity Fair reporter the inside of his tiny shack, which contains -- among other things -- two Italian soccer posters, an old beach-scene calendar and the front page of a local newspaper with a photograph of Barack Obama on it.

George Obama says he leads a hard life in a community rife with violence. He talks of people being hacked to death with machetes. He says the police don't bother to arrest people -- they just shoot them instead.

He says he's seen two of his friends killed. He says he has scars on his skin from fighting.

"I am good with my fists," he says.