Richard Hering

It's all over mainstream news outlets, and some outlying ones, so it must be true. The Venezuelan government has censored Twitter. Except that, when you look a little closer, this is by no means clearly the case.

The background to this is several days' protests by a segment of the Venezuelan opposition. Those who want the democratically elected President to leave office, not when his term is up in 5 years' time, nor after a possibly successful recall referendum in half that time, but right now, just after his party resoundingly won the latest local elections in Venezuela in December.

Reporting of this "censorship" story is strange to say the least. The proud sources of the story seem to be the correspondents of financial news outlet Bloomberg. They say that Nu Wexler, Twitter's PR man in Washington DC, confirmed in an email that "the (Venezuelan) government was behind the disruption." But they do not quote his email directly, so that the only statement by Mr Wexler in the public domain is one he made on his own network Twitter:

Nu Wexler ‏@wexler Feb 14

Users blocked in #Venezuela: Follow + receive notifications via SMS of any Twitter account. Send "SEGUIR [usuario]" to 89338 (@MovistarVE)

For the last four years, I have run a film club where we programme the kinds of movies we might not otherwise "find the time for". The screening is usually a double bill, every fortnight. When we started, my fear was that we might run out of unseen quality films quite quickly, and become stuck in some sort of mediocre world cinema back-catalogue. This has resoundingly not been the case, and there are now a vast range of films champing to get into our Sunday nights. Below I've listed all the films from 2013 that I can remember. Last year was unusual in having a larger than normal number of contemporary films, owing partly to a friend bringing a preview selection from the Brussels Film Festival. A particular revelation was Carl Theodor Dreyer's silent classic as part of a "Joan of Arc" night. On my wish-list for 2014: more films from Communist-era Eastern Europe (might sound dull, but the almost unknown films from the Czech and Hungarian New Waves are extraordinary), more documentary, more Tarkovsky, more silents, more Chinese 5th and 6th generation, plus creepy David Cronenberg.....

(I will add review comments as and when...)

2013 SCREENINGS

Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013) - Kechiche

I loved the almost Wagnerian intensity of this film, about all-engulfing "first love" such as you very rarely see depicted on film. The subsequent controversy around it I found essentially uninteresting (the supposedly "male gaze" in the sex scenes), though we did watch "Lesbians react...." on YouTube, which was quite entertaining and insightful. I agree with one of the women there, that the long sex scene is a kind of recipe book of love-making, and about as interesting.

Joan of Arc - Melies (1900) / The Trial of Joan of Arc (1963) - Bresson / The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) - Dreyer

The Pervert's Guide to the Cinema (2006) - Sophie Fiennes

To Live (1994) - Zhang Yimou / Lan Yu (2001) - Stanley Kwan

The Secret of the Grain (2007) - Kechiche

L'Avventura / La Notte / L'Eclisse (1960-62) - Antonioni

Beyond the Hills (2012) / 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) - Cristian Mungiu

Festen (1998) / The Hunt (2012) - Vinterberg

Losing Your Mind (A Perdre La Raison) (2012) - Joachim LaFosse

Cyclo (1995) - Tranh An Hung

Die Welt (2013) - Alex Pitsra

Viva Belarus! (2013) - Krzysztof Lukaszewicz / Alphaville (1965) - Godard

Baby Blues (2013) - Kasia Rosłaniec

The White Ribbon (2009) - Haneke / Lancelot du Lac (1974) - Bresson

Blackboards (2000) - Samira Makhmalbaf

East Palace, West Palace (1996) - Zhang Yuan / Poetry (2010) - Lee Chang-Dong

Around 7,000 Venezuelan Twitter accounts were deleted yesterday, including those of an elected state governor, three cabinet ministers, a radio station, a revolutionary daily newspaper, and the official accounts of ministries and other institutions. They all appear to have been pro-government accounts, and none of them of the opposition.

Twitter has been an effective means of communication for supporters of the Bolivarian revolution, since late President Hugo Chavez opened an account in 2010 and reached 4 million followers, making his the second most popular account globally for a political leader, after Barack Obama's.

This appears to have been a coordinated, politically-motivated attack, but we don't know yet how it happened. Twitter spokesman Nu Wexler has flatly refused to comment.

There are basically three ways it could have occurred. Large-scale coordinated hacking and deletion of accounts by opposition supporters is a possibility. It could also be that a similar campaign of reporting accounts for spam triggered an algorithm in Twitter which automatically blocked the accounts (I'm being generous to Twiiter here!). Thirdly, and less likely in my opinion, it could be something much more sinister involving Twitter and for instance US Intelligence agencies.

As of this afternoon, some 50 accounts have been restored by Twitter, including those of Governor Aristobal Isturiz, which has 332,000 followers, and of Communications Minister Delcy Rodriguez. However most accounts have not been restored, for instance of Minister of the President's Office Wilmer Barrientos and of the Women's Ministry and the Bolivarian University of Venezuela.

It is important to set this attack in social and historical context. After opposition candidate Henrique Capriles came close to winning the Presidential election last April, focus has shifted to the local elections coming on December 8th. Both the Venezuelan opposition and their supporters in the US State Department know that a good showing for the opposition would help build support for a referendum to recall President Nicolas Maduro in 2016. Dirty tricks to derail the Venezuelan government now abound, principally in the form of economic sabotage, creating shortages in shops which the government is battling to combat. Some commentators therefore think the Twitter attack could be a trial for a much bigger taking-out of Bolivarian social media nearer the elections.

The corporate media at home and abroad play a crucial role in this destabilisation. The UK-based Economist had to print a letter from the Venezuelan Embassy in London refuting two erroneous articles on freedom of the press. The standard line, though, is of economic woes, though all social statistics disprove this absolutely. We can all do a bit to refute media distortions. Only last night I corrected the Bloomberg correspondent in Caracas Nathan Crooks (@nmcrooks), who had spouted an egregious error about the minimum wage. Distortion or carelessness? It's impossible to know, though in response he merely repeated the error. But the media lies about Venezuela, including in so-called liberal newspapers, are so blanket that they come to appear like the truth. Journalists don't expect to get called out, so we should.

The Venezuelan government has officially complained to Twitter, and although a few accounts have been restored, is yet to receive a reply. If Twitter PR Nu Wexler maintains this silence, and thousands of accounts remain suspended, it may be appropriate to observe that in his resume he has been in and out of the revolving doors of Capitol Hill, including time as the Communications Director for the House Budget Committee. I'm not suggesting anything nefarious, merely that he is part of a political elite which regards anything Bolivarian as bad. For that Washington 1%, gross interference in Venezuela's democracy, including its social media, is legitimate.

There are two types of computer user. There are wised-up geeks who use open source software, type command lines like it's in their blood, and talk a completely different, totally inaccessible language from the other type of user, who they mainly consider to be losers. This other user may have bought their computer on the recommendation of the guy in PC World, who also tried to sell them support for two years at a special price of 12.99 a month. They then try to run it with the pre-packaged closed-source trash-ware it comes with - the kind of software that wants to control you more than you controlling it. Some of these second type of users have bought a Mac, because, as proven by the fact that it's eye-wateringly expensive, it simply works. Except when they get it home they realize it doesn't.

A friend of mine, despite being a smart and creative person doing a master's in London, was a "loser user". When trying to download a torrent on her Mac through the official search engine Safari, she was getting a .exe file (don't ask me why). When she tried to play videos, she found most of them would not through the proprietary Quicktime player. The solution? To start to liberate her machine - use open source Firefox or closed-source, but more functional, Google Chrome as browser. Bingo, torrent files downloading films in Transmission. Use vlc as media player. Same result, every video file playing. As for Windows users, my reply is simple, but a bit more radical: "I won't fix your broken Windows computer, but I will help you install Ubuntu on it." Nobody I have done this for has ever felt the need to web-surf on Windows again.

My point here is this. Let's close the gap between the smart geeks, who would find my advice crass and obvious, and the general users, who are victims of corporate software and the enclosure of the internet, and who react with joy and relief when they start to liberate themselves just a little bit. Let's begin by helping them to install and use some really basic stuff, and take the opportunity to explain about open source and the open internet.

Following up on George Monbiot's article on the National Trust's policy on fracking, it's time they answered two simple questions:

1. Has the National Trust's "presumption against fracking" announced in August changed since Dame Helen Ghosh's statement?

2. If it has changed, have the National Trust's members been informed?