The Guardian has an eccentric concept of causation. It's one that it leaves unexplained in its leader today about the bombings on the Moscow Metro. Condemning these as barbaric and intolerable, the paper goes on to claim that 'Most terrorism has local not global roots'. Oh really?
We are to infer, then, that ideologies according to which blowing up commuters on the subway - or air passengers, revellers in bars, people on buses etc; in general, people at random - is justified have no causal influence in the production of events like this latest atrocity. It would be nice to see an account of causality that might justify such disregard for the effect that ideas can have on people's actions; however true it may also be that their actions can be influenced by localized grievances or other non-general causes. No such account would be credible, though. Why should the leader-writer(s) at the Guardian have an impulse to overlook or minimize the existence of a set of ideas that is of plainly global influence today, purporting to legitimize the likes of what just happened in Moscow, and before that in London and Madrid (to speak only of them)? I suppose because it doesn't sit comfortably with other Guardian viewpoints to fully acknowledge the existence and influence of these murderous ideas for the autonomous causal factor that they are. The paper needs to adjust its other viewpoints to fit in with reality. When it editorializes about torture, it leaves out that sort of claptrap, seemingly at ease with the insight that torture is a general problem that is produced at least in part by bad ideas about human rights and noxious security policies. Why the imbalance?