Lies, Damned Lies, and BBC narrative creation

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6474029.stm

The battle of Kursk was 'heavy fighting' (about 1,500 tanks destroyed). The Somme was 'heavy fighting' (10,000 casualties the first day). The battle of the Bulge was 'heavy fighting' (a whole US brigade of 2,500 men destroyed).

"Heavy fighting has broken out in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, between government forces backed by Ethiopian troops and armed insurgents. A BBC correspondent says seven people were killed in the battle, the heaviest since the Islamists fell last year."

Seven people? Currently, there is 'peace' in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the UN estimates that 800-900 people are still being shot dead a month. Seven people? What a f***ing joke.

When the BBC initially discovered that Ethiopian forces were going to help the Somali government retake Somalia they became slightly annoyed, and there were a number of stories heavily hinting that Somalia under the Union of Islamic Courts militia was nigh on a law-abiding nirvana where little old ladies could go the market unmolested, and crime was dealt with very efficiently (albiet brutally). Then towards the end of the Ethiopian invasion, the BBC discovered that the US was sending in AC-130 gunships and maybe helicopters to help, and it went from annoyance to hostility. At that point, it started predicting that the UIC would hold out for ages and they really represented a kind of grass-roots Somaliness rather than anything icky like international Islamo-fascism.

But then when the BBC found out that there were US special forces on the ground fighting alongside the Ethiopian heavy metal they went completely ape-shit. Their stories were now openly suggesting that this was simply another US proxy-war against a kindly, peaceloving, ghat-chewing laid back bunch of Muslims. They asserted that there WOULD be an insurgency in Mogadishu and in fact all over Somalia which would turn it into another Iraq.

Ever since then, their stories have tried to present the day-to-day lawlessness and bad habits of Somalis as a nascent insurgency, nay civil war. This utterly mendacious headline indicates what the BBC would like to see happen- the put-upon Islamists turning Somalia into another front against the fascist Americans. Disgusting.