Strange silences

If there is one certainty in the American Presidential elections, it is that none of the candidates of either party can ever stand watch on the walls of beleaguered cities, peering through the darkness infested by every multinational company imaginable…and do so in the name of the American working and middle classes. Their vigil keeping, their standing sentinel can only be in the name of ruthless profiteers and naked aggressors.

No-one in this campaign is as calculatedly cunning and ambitious as Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her venomous campaign — now playing the race card, now whipping up prospects of an assasination — is orchestrated with the audacious undertones that she deserves the nomination of her party and would not shrink at stooping to anything towards that end. She has sunken her campaign deeper and deeper into a negative and personal mudslinging contest.

In this almost toxic political environment, it is almost shocking that Obama has never revealed the Clintons’ money making brutality in Brazil. In April of this year, the Brazilian Ministry of Labour launched a raid on biofuel company Brenco (Brazil Renewable Energy Co.) operating in the states of Goias and Mato Grosso. The working conditions were described as degrading and akin to slavery.

Inspections carried out by the Ministry of Labour in five separate locations revealed that workers were suffering from hunger and cold and were not allowed to leave at the end of each working day. The Clintons are investors in Brenco. Their investment in a slave-labour firm is a manifestation of how they have enriched themselves on the basis of political connections whilst still in the White House.

Now this is exactly the thing. With the personal nature the political campaign has taken between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, one would have expected this very damning piece of information to be used by the latter’s camp. Nothing of the sort. Why, one must ask, is there such an ominous silence on this matter? The answer cannot be found in the good heartedness of Obama, nor in his fairy tale claim to bring a new political ethic to the Presidential elections. The answer lies in the very nature of bourgeois politics. The practices and behaviour of the Clintons are not abberations, but rather the norm of ruling class politics in America.

Obama, just like the Clintons, is being integrated into the interests of the ruling financial elite of the USA and will remain firmly committed to defending their profit interests. Neither he nor Hillary Clinton has any interest in bringing these ugly truths under the spotlight. Silence is golden.