Organised?

As per the comments a couple of posts down , I personally find it very difficult to believe that the London bombs yesterday were the work of Al Qa’eda. Gert pointed out Dustbinman’s “Lone Nutter Theory”, which – for me (and Jann) works a lot better.

Al Qa’eda have suddenly (by which I mean “over the last five years”) become the boogeyman of international terrorism. Anything involving large loss of life, or organisation, and bang, there we go, the name of Al Qa’eda comes up. Sometimes they’re covered by “Islamic Terrorists”, but as one person said in the press conferences yesterday (sorry, I didn’t see who it was who said it, and I’m going to paraphrase anyway)

I don’t want to hear the phrase “Islamic Terrorists”. These people are terrorists. Millions of people follow the Islamic faith, and are just as shocked and disgusted as us. Anyone who calls themselves an Islamic Terrorist is a liar – the two are mutually exclusive.

Yes, of course there will be a search for who set off the bombs. That’s just common sense. But, no matter what the government and media decide, I’m just not convinced of the Al Qa’eda “connection”. It always comes up now, and I don’t personally believe that an organisation can be the size that Al Qa’eda must be to organise global events can exist without more people being aware of it.

Yesterday’s attack was completely under the radar. Investigators will now go back and possibly make a chain of who said what, but I doubt it. If they do, it’ll be too many coincidences, too many chances to “make the facts fit the conclusion”. There’ll be a conspiracy theory for sure, and whoever did do it will be decried as being part of the Al Qa’eda organisation without a doubt.

From the events that have been claimed by Al Qa’eda, the London bombs were remarkably un-showy, and resulted in (in comparison) an amazingly low loss of life. The Madrid train bombs killed hundreds, 9/11 killed hundreds. London killed 38, at last count. I’m not belittling the London bombs at all, nor their effect on the city and country – I just don’t believe it can be attributed to the same organisation as the others.

My personal belief already is that this is more linked to winning the Olympic bid, rather than G8 and the like. I also think that if Paris had won the bid, France would this morning be waking up to the same thoughts and reactions as Britain has had. I don’t mean that this was an international concerted campaign, but that one person could easily travel in the 18 hours between announcement of the bid winner and the relevant city – the only one that couldn’t have been done in such a way was New York, and that was always an outsider in the bids anyway. London, Madrid, Paris, and Moscow could all have been reached in that time though. And the two main competitors were connected by a matter of a three or four hour train journey through Eurostar – never reknowned as the most security conscious terminus anyway.

Again, an Al Qa’eda effort would probably have happened a day earlier, in all five cities, timed to happen either just before or just after the announcement of the winning city. With the events around it, and the countries involved, that would have worked. Or even attacking the various country’s representatives as they were amassed in one place, the Raffles Conference Centre in Singapore.

I believe that the London bombs will turn out to be the work of one person. At most, two or three people, who didn’t need to communicate except by meeting face-to-face. But probably just one person.