D'y'know, A camera's interesting when you think about it

This weekend I heard the latest twist in the never-ending opera bouffe that is Northern politics. I imagine that if you tried to explain the history of the troubles to anyone uninitiated (I, personally can never be arsed) then they’d assume you were making it all up and repeating the same bits over and over again.

It seems Ian Paisley’s latest demand is that the IRA take some photographs of themselves putting weapons out of commission. I don't know about you, but does this suggest that, like the guns, Paisley himself has been in Ulster politics for far too long?

It may have been that when Paisley was exhorting Protestant bigots to attack Catholic estates in the ‘60s that portable cameras may have been the cutting edge in technology. Unlike the psyches of Northern politicians, though, the rest of the world moves on. Today people can sneak digital camcorders into movies and film them and sell them to Chinese gangsters and backpackers can buy them in places like Hanoi and Kuala Lumper and post them home. This of course is an abhorrent breach of copyright laws that deprives Hollywood studios of the money they need to pay Julia Roberts and anyone visiting Vietnam should avoid streets in the old town just north of the lake like Hang Ba and Hang Bec where this sort of thing goes on.

Surveillance cameras are so ubiquitous these days that even the farmhouses where the weapons are stored probably have their own web-cams, which are accessible via the internet.

As you undoubtedly know digital images are really easy to manipulate and anyone who knows his way around a computer could produce juxtapose shots of building sites and guns and make it look like the guns were being encased in cement. This could lead to a new commission being formed with Oliver Stone at it’s head and the usual gravy train following in it’s wake.

Then of course, there’s virtual reality. If Paisley gets a DVD of Martin McGuiness dressed in shades and a black crombie saying “We’ve got guns. Lots of Guns! We need Concrete. Lots of Concrete!” I’d hate to be the hip young DUP member who had to explain that that wasn't for real.

Perhaps I’m underestimating Paisley, who might secretly be hoping that they use their camera phones to take snaps, making them vulnerable to surveillance from mobile masts, though not of course if they’re on Meteor, in which case Paisley will be pressing his fingers together, rasping, “You win this time, Mr. Bond, I mean Mr. Adams.”

None of this is to denigrate the role of cameras in the modern media. During the Irish famine, many people in Britain refused to believe the extent of the suffering as there were no photographs, though there were at least half a dozen cameras in the country at the time, except of course that they were all owned by the landowning classes who were feasting on the backs of the skeletal waifs that they were systematically starving to death.

There are quite a few photos of the American civil war, though most of them are off generals with unfeasibly big sideburns. In fact sideburns are named after Edmund Burnside, a federal commander.

In the years leading up to the Franco-Prussian war Prussian surveyors would disguise themselves as tourists and photograph sites in the Alsace-Lorraine region with typical teutonic attention to detail. When moving pictures were invented the camera still remained a tool of the ruling classes with propaganda shots of soldiers running to their deaths at improbably fast speeds. Astonishingly, during the second world war Josef Goebbals ordered 100,000 soldiers away from the Eastern front to make a Technicolor picture called Kolberg, about a battle in the Napoleonic wars.

There are lots of pictures of the death camps, though there are some loony right-wing types on both sides of the Atlantic who argue that they are forged.

The camera really came into it’s own during the American war in Vietnam. In keeping with Johnson’s “Great Society” journalists were allowed pretty much free access to the troops. This didn't go down too well with the military, who argued that civilians just don’t understand that if you’re hanging around Saigon smoking pot, shagging prostitutes and listening to the Doors and then suddenly put in the heat of battle you’re going to crack and start raping and massacring peasants.

The shot of Kim Phuc, a child in Southern Vietnam, the area that the US was supposed to be protecting, running nakedly from planes that were spraying napalm, did more than anything else to provoke opposition to the War back in the States.

The US government learned a lesson from this. It wasn't to stop getting involved in wars in places they knew nothing about or to reduce their dependence on massive force, but to restrict access to photographers. During the first gulf war, only accredited photographers were allowed to join the military, and their photographs gave many people the impression that war was like a video game, so much so that some of the soldiers of the second gulf war interviewed by Michael Moore seemed genuinely surprised that war involved loss of life and horrific injury.

The US government have still done all they can to shield people from this uncomfortable truth. The bombing of Baghdad took place just before US networks licences were due for renewal. And guess who’s the head of the federal broadcasting commission? Why, it’s none other than Michael “Son of Colin” Powell.

There are encouraging signs, though, that photojournalists are finding a way out of this Orwellian nightmare. The first came with the pictures from Abu Gharib prison earlier this year. It was notable that while Donald Rumsfeld criticised the perpetrators of the awful torture that went on there, his real venom was reserved for those pesky photojournalists with their digital cameras, which they didn't have any of in his day.

Rumsfeld is the sort of guy who’d shoot the messenger only if he couldn't think of any slower, more painful way of terminating his existence. The ironic thing is that so much of the “Evidence” that Saddam had WMD was photographic in nature. It’s as if he believes that only Americans should have cameras as well as weapons.

But America’s policy of leaving Iraq’s borders open means that people having been bringing in cameras as well as guns, with Qatari network Al-Jazeera in particular becoming unlikely Robert Capas of our age and the subject of Rummy’s latest hissy fit. Ironically it’s the cameras could ultimately do more damage to the US, exacerbating divisions in a society which is already dangerously polarised. The people who are against the war will be angered by shots of people being mown down in hospital beds, while those in favour will put pictures of that soldier smoking a Marlboro, who could become a Che Guevara of the American Right on their walls.

There are rumours that, once again the US is using Napalm, this time in Fallujah. If you’ve got a strong stomach, you can download pictures of the victims of this chemical and their children. I saw a person in Vietnam who had a huge scar in the middle of his face where his nose ought to be, and dozens of people crawling on all fours because they had only stumps growing from their hips.

If it does turn out that the American military is using this agent in Iraq there’ll be plenty of people who’ll argue that the towelheads had it coming for hating freedom so much. And there’ll be others who’ll want to take their country back from such vicious, bigoted monsters.

This could lead to a conflict which would make the Northern troubles look an argument in a hairdressers salon. But I wouldn't expect Ian Paisley to gain any sort of perspective.