“I don’t want them to have any more children.”
This is the pay-off line of Nadine Labaki’s
movie titled “Capernaum,” Arabic for chaos or, in Labaki’s word, “hell”. It is a line that has been richly justified by the event
sequences of the film itself.
Uttered by Zain, the film’s 12-year-old protagonist, the
line comes late in a film whose editing throws it into a kind of chaos all its
own. But it is a curious chaos. Because its actors are not professionals. They
are real people, living in real time the kinds of lives the film script
dictates they portray, but at the same time, because of their authenticity, it
is a film in which real events and narrative are braided together in such uncanny
ways, that if migrant conditions in Lebanon (and the U.S.) were not so catastrophically
predictable, they would make the film seem downright prophetic. Real events
(such as the incarceration of its “illegal” actress and of her baby [unrelated
to the actual actress] by immigration authorities) overtake the actors in real
time, much as they are developed by the film itself.
The film tells the rather complex story of marginalized
people, half of whom has lost a country (mostly Syria) they once imagined was
theirs, and those born in a country (Lebanon) in which they currently live, but
where they are as much in exile as the refugees who come seeking a minimal
survival on their shores. In Lebanon now, both migrants from Syria and Africa
and Lebanese natives are roughly equal in number.
 |
| Tide of migrants risking drowning in the Mediterranean |
The film’s events uncannily mirror one another: a
Lebanese-born family “sell” their underage daughter into a marriage which
ultimately kills her, and the protagonist himself, in a final desperate
measure, gives up the baby whose survival has become his burden to bear, by
giving him to a racketeer who falsely promises to see the baby adopted by a
family which can give him a more stable life.
 |
| Zain and his sister Sahar |
Untangled, the film’s plot could have appeared even more
forthright than it is: Zain, the 12-year-old protagonist has been born into a
numerous, and abusive family unable to feed or care for him or his many
siblings in any way that might make it resemble even a marginally normal one.
His threshold for abuse is crossed when his parents “sell” his favorite,
barely-pubescent sister, to their landlord, for a clutch of chickens, hoping to
guarantee themselves survival, and their daughter a bed.
Zain goes on the lam, eventually ending up in an amusement
park where an “illegal” African cleaning woman takes pity on him, invites him
to stay, and care for her baby, whose existence she needs to keep secret in
order not to lose her job. When she is picked up by the authorities because of
her unofficial status, that baby, who is the run-away star of this film (and in
real life, actually a girl named Treasure) becomes his ward to feed and house relying
on his street wits as best he can.
 |
| Zain and Treasure |
When his slum landlord changes the lock on Zain’s hovel, with
no shelter his any longer, he is forced to turn the baby over to the racketeer
who falsely promises him a home, and who in turn will sell him, as he does others
into a warehouse full of other miserable refugees, whose clandestine existence
is exposed by authorities in a midnight raid.
Meantime, because he has exhausted other places to be, Zain
returns home, demands his official papers, non existent because his parents are
too poor and irresponsible ever to have registered his birth, and failing to
secure them, steals a butcher knife, determined to kill the man who married his
sister, and who has become responsible for her death. Because he succeeds only
in wounding him, Zain is brought to trial for his crime, and imprisoned.
While in prison—and here comes the film’s Achilles heel—he
watches a phone -in TV show which urges him to sue his parents for having been
born, incidentally an idea originally culled by the director in her three years
of original research among actual Lebanese slum dwelling children prior to
shooting the film.
But in its truthfulness, the shabbiness of the film’s
pretext exposes the fake global TV West-imported culture. Despite its arbitrariness,
the device allows Zain finally to confront the parents whose unacceptable
abuses have motivated the film’s action all along.
On the personal level his final line: “I don’t want them to
have children any more”, unpacks the realities of unimaginable poverty and
family abuse; but on the public level, the universal ring of that line is what
elevates the film, flawed as it is, to a major work of art, because it conveys
a message of which the film-maker herself is apparently still unaware: “This
planet is no where to have children any more.”
The catastrophic effects of global warming of which we have
been aware—some of us—even before the 70s, is now upon us: Half of Syria is
emptied of its inhabitants motivated as much by war as by a catastrophic
drought. And what is occurring on the U.S. southern border is as much the
result of warming temperatures and drought leading to crop failures as it is by
U.S. ”regime change” policies (which show no signs of let up); and of NAFTA.
The famine, flood and fire, of which we have been promised, is now in delivery.
I am reminded of what I published i on the anniversary of the Fukushima disaster in Devil’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima
Step by Step:
If
you were a child of Basra, playing in abandoned vehicles or tanks, you would
have inhaled DU (“depleted” uranium, more toxic even than weapons grade
plutonium) and probably ingested it. You, too, would become a statistic—an
Iraqi one—one of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children developing childhood
leukemia. You would be five times more
at risk for developing cancer of the thyroid. You would be condemned to a short
life of bodily suffering, and while you sickened and died, you would have to
see the pain in your mother’s eyes, your father’s grief—if you still had a
mother or a father. If you were or are a woman in Basra, your risk of giving
birth to a severely handicapped child would have increased 60%. Either you
might have been helpless to prevent a pregnancy, or perhaps you would have
ignored the advice of those Iraqi doctors who had not already fled Iraq who
said, “Iraq is no longer a place to have children,” because had you given birth
to such a child, you would have had to care for it with the little food
available to you, bathed him with contaminated rain or sewer water. Perhaps you
would have had to carry him, if in his short life he could never have hoped to
walk, or see, or feed himself—or any of the kinds of things that characterize
human living in the world. And you yourself might be one of the 70 out of 1,000
people to develop cancer.
Over
1,000 U. S. military bases have metastacized throughout the war-making world,
all of their war-making activities productive of pollution and global warming.
How many more ruined countries besides Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Niger,
Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan until the world itself has become so polluted
people everywhere can’t even consider bearing children any more?
(Did you know that if you have trouble with any of these
links, you can search for the same petition on line?)
Support Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by demanding end to family
separation and child detention at the borer by signing:
Donate to unlock $500 million gift to block Keystone XL
Pipeline at:
Demand Congress repeal its giveaway of sacred Native
American site to foreign-owned mining company at
https://act.credoaction.com/sign/oak_flat_2019?sp_ref=470827089.4.193561.e.624204.2&referring_akid=31365.2781582.sgdvVJ&source=mailto_sp
https://act.credoaction.com/sign/oak_flat_2019?sp_ref=470827089.4.193561.e.624204.2&referring_akid=31365.2781582.sgdvVJ&source=mailto_sp
Urge your Representatives to support hold the LYNE,
restricting nuclear weapons first use at:
Urge California’s Gov. Newsom to test Diablo Nuclear Plant
for safety at
Tell
JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo it’s time they divest form private prisons at: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/wells-chase-show-love-this-valentines-day-break-up-with-private-prisons-3?clear_id=true&source=NAT_M_JWJ_previous_signers
Urge Congress to cancel Puerto Rico's mountainous
debt at
Demand
the U.S. rejoin the Paris Climate Accord at https://go.cbcpac.org/page/s/Rejoin-Paris-Climate-Accord?source=MS_EM_PET_2019.01.29_B2_Rejoin-Paris-Climate-Accord_X__F1_S1_C1__all
Domestic Politics
Panel of Virginia redistricting judges chooses redistricting
map for Virginia’s House of Delegates toward Democratic voters.
California’s U.S. Federal Judge Haywood Gilliam argues that
evangelical goal was specifically to withhold contraception from a substantial
number of women.
Forced-birthers lose Iowa round as state judge strikes down
‘fetal heartbeat’ abortion ban.
Southern Poverty Law Center sues administration on behalf of
thousands of detained unaccompanied migrant kids.
ACLU wins case demanding census reflect African Americans
and other people of color across the U.S.
In California, after 40 years of litigation over three staffer
generations, ACLU sees SB 1421 signed into law to go onto effect in January,
2019, guaranteeing public access to information about police department
wrongdoing.
ACLU urges Supreme Court to uphold separation of church and
state.
Judge Sallie Kim grants motion for new bond hearing for Raul
Lopez, 46 Guatemalan immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for 29 years and who
is seeking asylum.
D.C. lawmakers reintroduce war powers resolution to end
carnage in Yemen and reclaim
Congressional constitutional authority.
With over 200 original sponsors, Rep. John Larson (D-CT)
Social Security Chair of House and Ways introduces the introduction of Social
Security 2100 Act.
Introduced by Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Adam Smith
(D-WA) no first-use bill would reduce
the risk of nuclear war.
Starting this month, laws go into effect mandating that
hospitals must publicly
reveal their master price lists on line.
U. S. House of representatives takes on voting rights after
years of Republican rule.
Open internet defenders take FCC to court.
Judge advances protesters’ free speech lawsuit against San
Diego police.
In local news, progressives far outnumber regular Democrats
in recent Berkeley vote electing delegates to the state party convention.
In a gesture toward the homeless, anonymous Chicago good
Samaritan guarantees 70 homeless people hotel rooms in subzero temperatures.
Ten more boxes!!! of suppressed evidence come to light in
Abu Mumia Jamal case.
U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro
(TX-20), Chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Vice Chairman of the
House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and a member of the Intelligence, and
Education and Labor Committees, and U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a
member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced
legislation to help children and families affected by the family separation
crisis resulting from administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy.
Planetary
Sustainability
Germany to close 84 coal fired power plants, relying
primarily on renewables within the next 19 years.
Germany leads in renewables with its own green bank.
In victory for land and water, Canadian Supreme Court rules
that bankrupt fossil fuel companies must clean up pollution left behind.
Diminishing demand and more affordable renewables cast doubt
on feasibility and profitability of Atlantic Coast Pipeline according to
report.
U.S. Meddling
Traditionally a U.S. tool, a majority of 18 OAS countries rejects
motion to recognize puppet non-candidate Venezuelan Gualdó.
Resistance
Medea Benjamin is thanked by Venezuelan Foreign Minister for interrupting Pence at the
OAS with her sign “a coup is not a democratic transition”.
In the midst of soasring temperatures in Australia, and sub-zero weather in Eastern U.S., Extinction Rebellion shuts down Rockefeller Center Plaza to
create awareness of climate change’s extreme peril.
Gilets Jaunes Assembly of Assemblies calls for massive
strike.
Kings County, Washington about to ban all fossil fuel
infrastructure.
Virginia teachers march to demand funding and better
salaries.
More than 80 environmental activists die in at Brighton
shopping center.
Teachers in Denver, Oakland, and Chicago move towards
strikes.
Civil rights groups to hold social justice rally demanding
end to Confederate monuments before super bowl.
Now in its fourth week as a student-led strike, in cold rain more than
80,000 people march in Brussels demanding EU take urgent action to
address world’s climate crisis.
Mexican workers engage in wildcat strikes at the border,
halting production, resulting in 23 companies agreeing to a 20% wage increase
and a $1,700 bonus.
Pipeline fighter locks himself to horizontal drill,
effectively stopping work at Mountain Valley Pipeline.
