the safest place to be on a plane: Take a window seat in economy class

A recent report reveals the safest place to be on a plane: Take a window seat in economy class, keep your seatbelt on, and make sure you're just a few rows from an emergency exit. Those seats all the way in the back? It turns out, some people really like them. A study by the airline British Airways has revealed that in economy class on the Boeing 747, passengers prefer the last row of the plane. The reason: The last seats are twin, allowing couples to have a row to themselves. (Photo: iStockphoto)As surfaced by Gizmodo, British Airways reports that more than half their customers traveling in pairs choose seats 51/52B, 51/52C, 51/52H, and 51/52J in a Boeing 747. If you're lucky enough to be flying first class, though, the most popular seats are at the front of the plane: 1A and 1K. Other tidbits about passenger habits: Among travelers who book their seats 24 hours in advance, 54 percent prefer to sit on the right-hand side of the cabin while 46 percent pick the left side. British Airways can't exactly explain the preference, suggesting perhaps that more people are right-handed. Sara Dunham, British Airways' head of retail and direct channels, said, "There are lots of theories why people favor the right-hand side: There are more right-handed people, we automatically tend to turn right, but the truth is we don't know for sure." On the other hand (pun intended), window seats are 6 percent more popular than aisle ones. "It would seem, though, that the window-lovers who are firm fans of their view slightly outnumber the aisle-hoppers who like to get out of their seats easily," Dunham said. According to the British Airways press release, those who prefer aisle seats sit toward the front of the aircraft. The ones who want a view head to the back. But perhaps the smartest way to pick a seat is to consider safety. A flier's chance of dying in an airplane crash is minute, just 1 in 4.7 million, according to the Telegraph. A recent report reveals the safest place to be on a plane: Take a window seat in economy class, keep your seatbelt on, and make sure you're just a few rows from an emergency exit.

Insight: Once a landlord's serf, a Pakistani woman enters election fray

By Matthew Green | Reuters –  HYDERABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - When Veero Kolhi made the asset declaration required of candidates for Pakistan's May elections, she listed the following items: two beds, five mattresses, cooking pots and a bank account with life savings of 2,800 rupees ($28). While she may lack the fortune that is the customary entry ticket to Pakistani politics, Kolhi can make a claim that may resonate more powerfully with poor voters than the wearily familiar promises of her rivals. For Kolhi embodies a new phenomenon on the campaign trail - she is the first contestant to have escaped the thrall of a feudal-style land owner who forced his workers to toil in conditions akin to modern-day slavery. "The landlords are sucking our blood," Kolhi told Reuters at her one-room home of mud and bamboo on the outskirts of the southern city of Hyderabad. "Their managers behave like pimps - they take our daughters and give them to the landlords." To her supporters, Kolhi's stand embodies a wider hope that the elections - Pakistan's first transition between elected civilian governments - will be a step towards a more progressive future for a country plagued by Islamic militancy, frequent political gridlock and the worsening persecution of minorities. To skeptics, the fact that Kolhi has no realistic chance of victory is merely further evidence that even the landmark May 11 vote will offer only a mirage of change to a millions-strong but largely invisible rural underclass. Yet there is no doubt that hers is a remarkable journey. A sturdy matriarch in her mid-50s who has 20 grandchildren, Kolhi -- a member of Pakistan's tiny Hindu minority -- is the ultimate outsider in an electoral landscape dominated by wealthy male candidates fluent in the art of back room deals. Possessed of a ready, raucous laugh, but unable to write more than her name, Kolhi was once a "bonded laborer," the term used in Pakistan for an illegal but widely prevalent form of contemporary serfdom in which entire families toil for years to pay often spurious debts. Since making her escape in the mid-1990s, Kolhi has lobbied the police and courts to release thousands of others from the pool of indebted workers in her native Sindh province, the vast majority of whom are fellow Hindus. On April 5, Kolhi crossed a new threshold in her own odyssey when she stood on the steps of a colonial-era courthouse in Hyderabad and brandished a document officials had just issued, authorizing her to run for the provincial assembly. With no rival party to back her, Kolhi's independent run may make barely a dent at the ballot box in Sindh, a stronghold of President Asif Ali Zardari's ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP). But her beat-the-odds bravado has lit a flame for those who adore her the most: families she has helped liberate from lives as vassals. "Once I only drank black tea, but now I am free I can afford tea with milk," said Thakaro Bheel, who escaped from his landlord a decade ago and now lives in Azad Nagar, a community of former bonded laborers on the edge of Hyderabad. "These days I make my own decisions. All that is thanks to Veero." BAREFOOT IN THE NIGHT Like millions of the landless, Kolhi's ordeal began a generation ago when drought struck her home in the Thar desert bordering India, forcing her parents to move to a lusher belt of Sindh in search of work harvesting sunflowers or chilies. Kolhi was married as a teenager but her husband fell into debt and she was forced to work 10-hour days picking cotton, gripped by a fear that their landlord might choose a husband for Ganga, her daughter, who would soon be ten years old. One night Kolhi crept past armed guards and walked barefoot to a village to seek help. Her husband was beaten as punishment for her escape, Kolhi said, but she managed to contact human rights activists who wrote to police on her behalf. Officers were reluctant to confront the landlord but they relented after Kolhi staged a three-day hunger strike at their station. More than 40 people were freed. "I was very scared, but I hoped that I could win freedom for myself and my family," said Kolhi. "That's why I kept on running." Now Kolhi spends her days careering along dirt roads in a battered Suzuki minivan decorated with stickers of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the Latin American revolutionary, on her quest for votes. Her only luxury: Gold Leaf, a brand of cigarette. Her only campaign equipment: an old megaphone. While Kolhi clearly enjoys meeting supporters - greeting women by placing two palms on their bowed heads in a traditional gesture of protection - she has still only reached a fraction of her constituency's 133,000 voters. The favorite remains Sharjeel Memon, an influential businessman and PPP stalwart. Memon was not available for comment. DAUGHTERS FOR SALE Despite the struggle Kolhi faces, the fact she is able to run at all has emboldened campaigners forworkers' rights in Sindh. Even remote areas of the province have not been immune to the influence of a more assertive media and judiciary that have reshaped national politics during tumultuous years following a 1999 army coup and a transition to democracy in 2008. "The landlords are afraid of court cases so they do not abuse and torture people as much as before," said Lalee Kolhi, another former bonded laborer turned activist, who is no relation to Veero Kolhi. Yet in some areas, land owners can still exploit a symbiotic relationship with the bureaucracy, police and courts to deprive workers of rights and attempt to sway their votes. Although Veero Kolhi works with a local organization that says it has helped rescue some 26,000 indebted workers in the last 12 years, several estimates put the total figure of bonded laborers inPakistan at roughly eight million. Not all landlords are tyrants, but the arrival last month of an extended family of 63 share-croppers at Azad Nagar, the village for freed workers, provided a glimpse of the timeworn tricks they use to ensure debts keep on growing. Lakhi Bheel produced a scrap torn from an exercise book that declared he had accumulated obligations of 99,405 rupees after toiling for three years. Bheel said he had decided to make a break for freedom after the land owner threatened to sell the family's daughters in return for bride prices. "I didn't eat meat once in three years," Bheel said, adding that shotgun-toting guards had sometimes roughed up workers. "We had to pay half the salaries of the men who were beating us." Kolhi's supporters say the only way to end the oppression in Sindh would be to give destitute workers their own plots of land. But as long as the feudal class retains political influence, talk of land reform remains taboo. Undaunted, Kolhi -- bedecked in a garland of red roses and jasmine -- launched her shot at office with an ultimatum. "First we will ask the landlords to obey the law, and if they refuse we will take them to court," she said, her voice rising with emotion. "We will continue our struggle until the last bonded laborer is freed." (Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Can Burma Avoid the Curse of Sex Tourism? | TIME.com

http://world.time.com/2013/04/12/can-burma-avoid-the-curse-of-sex-tourism/?iid=gs-article-mostpop1

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Caracazo, Legasi Chavez dan Maduro

"Di bawah kepemimpinan saya, Revolusi Chavez akan terus berlanjut". -Nicolas Maduro VENEZUELA pada 5 Maret 2013 telah kehilangan pemimpimpinnya yang luar biasa, Hugo Chavez, tetapi transformasi projek sosialis dan demokratnya tak akan pernah pupus, bahkan akan semakin digelorakan. Soal ini diungkapkan dengan tegas oleh Capres dari Partai Sosialis Venezuela yang presiden sementara Venezuela pascawafatnya Chavez dalam tulisan opini yang dikirimkan kepada media ternama dunia Guardian, Jumat 12 April 2013. Maduro sejak muda memang dikenal piawai menulis. Dia cukup sering menulis soal sosialisme di berbagai media massa, termasuk salah satunya dia kirimkan ke laman Guardian dua hari menjelang pilpres Venezuela 14 April 2013. Yah, pada hari Minggu ini, rakyat Venezuela akan memilih. Bagi Maduro, pilihan warga tersebut hanya dua: melanjutkan revolusi yang sudah diinisiasi oleh Chavez sejak 1998 atau kembali ke masa lalu. "Saya selama ini bekerja dengan Chavez dan sekarang ikut dalam pilpres ini untuk menggantikan dia. Sebelum wafat, Chavez telah merestui saya sebagai penggantinya. Ini adalah kehormatan bagi saya untuk terus melanjutkan Revolusi Chavez," kata Maduro kepada para pendukungnya.  Berdasarkan data KPU setempat, dari 29 juta orang populasi Venezuela saat ini, terdapat 15 juta yang punya hak pilih. Di tangan mereka inilah, masa depan Venezuela ditentukan. Momentum pemilu kali ini memang agak spesial karena selama 14 tahun terahir, mayoritas warga Venezuela telah memberikan mandat kepada Chavez untuk menjalankan kekuasaan dan dia bagi banyak rakyat Amerika Latin, diangap sebagai pemimpin yang mumpuni. Mengapa? Jawabannya sederhana karena Chavez telah mentransformasi negara miskin itu menjadi salah satu kawasan di mana kesenjangan sosial antara miskin dan kaya yang semula sangat lebar kini paling sempit di kalangan negara-negara Amerika Latin. Ini artinya, selama Chavez memerintah, dia berhasil mendistribusikan kekayaan negara untuk kepentingan orang banyak.  Saat Chavez pertama kali menduduki kursi presiden pada 1999 usai menang pemilu pada akhir 1998, warga Venezuela hidup dalam kondisi yang sangat miskin akibat penerapan kebijakan ekonomi neoliberal oleh rezim sebelumnya (pemerintah Carlos Andres Perez) yang berkuasa selama 20 tahun itu.   Akibat praktik neoliberal ini, aset-aset negara yang strategis seperti tambang minyak, habis dikuasai kaum pemilik modal.  "Insiden Caracazo" Venezuela merupakan salah satu negara kaya minyak, tetapi kehidupan warganya sebelum Chavez berkuasa, benar-benar sangat memprihatinkan. Kekayaan minyak tersebut tak dirasakan oleh mereka, tetapi oleh pengusaha minyak. Bahkan, gara-gara sikap pemerintah Perez yang terlalu pro-pasar itu, ribuan warga Venezuela menjadi tumbalnya. Mereka tewas dalam demonstrasi menentang kenaikan harga yang terjadi di Carazas pada 1989 lalu. Insiden ini mirip dengan demonstrasi 1998 di Indonesia kendati di negara kita itu berlangsung relatif aman dan damai. Laporan laman bbc.co.uk menyebutkan, dalam demonstrasi menentang kenaikan harga di Caracas itu atau dikenal dengan nama insiden Caracazo itu, sedikitnya 3.000 orang tewas. Peristiwa ini pun menjadi momentum awal kebangkitan sosialisme di negara tersebut yang 10 tahun kemudian melahirkan Chavez sebagai pemimpin yang pro-warga miskin menggantikan rezim kapitalis di bawah kekuasaan Perez. Tak heran banyak warga Venezuela yang mayoritas Katolik itu, menganggap Chavez adalah Kristusnya kaum papa.  Selama dipimpin Chavez (1999-2013) inilah, semua kebijakan yang sebelumnya sangat neoliberalis diubah atau ditrasformasikan oleh Chavez menjadi kebijakan pro-warga miskin. Salah satunya pada 2003, semua aset minyak yang sebelumnya dimiliki swasta dinasionalisasikan menjadi perusahaan negara. Sejak itu, semua keuntungan minyak pun masuk kas negara dan sepenuhnya digunakan untuk membiayai pembangunan warga, diantaranya menyediakan jaminan kesehatan dan pendidikan secara gratis. Hasilnya, tingkat kemiskinan di negara itu menurun drastis sehingga pada saat ini, Venezuela merupakan negara dengan tingkat kesenjangan pendapatannnya paling rendah  di antara kalangan negara-negara Amerika Latin dan Karibia.  Semua pencapaian positif di era Chavez ini kembali didengungkan oleh Nicolas Maduro selama masa kampanye pilpres yang baru  saja berakhir Kamis (11/4) lalu, guna meraih simpati warga negara kaya minyak itu. Maduro memang merupakan satu-satunya politisi yang direstui mendiang Chavez untuk menjadi penggantinya. Dia mengumumkan itu pada akhir Desember 2012 lalu atau tiga bulan sebelum ajal menjemputnya.   Pilihan Chavez memang tak salah karena Maduro adalah seorang sosialis sejati. Berdasarkan penelusuran riwayat hidupnya, dia sejak muda dikenal sebagai aktivis buruh yang sangat vokal sehingga pernah menjabat sebagai Ketua Serikat Buruh se-Venezuela yang kemudian mengantarkannya menjadi politisi ternama di Venezuela. Sama dengan Chavez, seperti dikutip laman globalsecurity.org, Maduro juga anti-Amerika. Ini membuat mantan Menlu Venezuela itu, pernah  menolak saat ditawari beasiswa ke Amerika. Sebagai gantinya, dia ambil beasiswa dari pemerintah Kuba. Di samping itu, loyalitasnya kepada Chavez sangat tinggi sehingga seluruh karirnyanya dihabiskan untuk bekerja dengan pemimpin karismatik itu.  Dengan pengalaman dan juga sikap politiknya itu, banyak orang percaya, Maduro adalah calon terideal untuk melanjutkan kepemimpinan Chavez. Para Chavista (pendukung Chavez) diyakini akan memberikan suara kepadanya. Hasil jajak pendapat memang menunjukkan, Maduro unggul tipis atas rivalnya, Henrique Capriles (41), Gubernur Provinsi Miranda. Tak heran, banyak kalangan memprediksi, politisi partai sosialis ini berpeluang besar memenangi pilpres mendatang. Pasalnya, dia adalah satu-satunya calon yang benar-benar direstui mendiang Chavez. Selain itu, mayoritas warga Venezuela sangat mengidolakan Chavez sehingga ini akan menguntungkan Maduro.  Namun demikian, ini tak berarti Capriles adalah lawan yang mudah dikalahkan. Capriles sendiri, seperti Maduro, punya profil yang cukup meyakinkan. Kendati usianya masih relatif muda, 41 tahun, dia sudah kaya makan asam dan garam banyak di dunia politik Venezuela. Pria lulusan Hukum Perdagangan dari Universitas Katolik Andres Bello, Caracas ini pertama kali mendapatkan jabatan politis pada tahun 2000 saat di aterpilih menjadi wali Kota Baruta mengalahkan kandidat dari kubus Chavista, Simon Pestana. Lalu, pada 2008, dia berhasil menjadi Gubernur Miranda setelah mengalahkan loyalis chavista, Diosdado Cabello. Kemudian pada pilpres 2012, dia ikut menantang chavez, kendati akhirnya kalah dengan perolehan suara 44 persen. Lalu, dia kembali menjadi Gubernur Miranda periode kedua setelah berhasil mengalahkan, lagi-lagi  kandidat usungan kubu Chavez. Dari rekaman jejak karir politiknya itu, kita bisa melihat jika Capriles adalah sosok yang tangguh dan cukup populer sehingga dia mampu meraih semua jabatan politis itu dari orang-orang Chavez (Chavista). Kini pada 14 April, dia kembali akan bertarung melawan Chavista lainnya, Nicolas Maduro.  Sudah tentu bagi Capriles ini bukan hal yang mudah karena Maduro dari banyak hal punya lebih banyak keuntungan ketimbang dirinya. Namun demikian, Capriles tak patah semangat. Dia menjadikan sejumlah problem ekonomi warisan Chavez seperti masalah listrik dan sejumlah projek pembangunan yang tak kunjung selesai itu, menjadi senjata untuk merebut hati warga miskin Venezuela. Untuk kelompok warga kaya, Capriles tak usah lagi bersusah payah menarik perhatian mereka. Pasalnya, selama ini dukungan dari mereka inilah yang membuat Capriles sejak terjund i dunia politik pada usia 20 tahunan itu, bertahan sampai saat ini. Kelompok warga kaya dan pengusaha yang menjadi konstituen politik Capriles selama ini memang tak menyukai kepemimpinan Hugo Chavez yang dinilai telah membebani mereka dengan pajak tinggi yang digunakan Chavez untuk membiayai program-program pro-warga papa.  Selain itu, bagi kaum pengusaha, nasionalisasi perusahaan minyak dan industri  strategis lainnya, telah menyebabkan para pemilik modal tersebut gagal mengeruk keuntungan maksimal. Soalnya, semua sektor strategis sejak Chavez memerintah, dikuasai negara dan ini dapat dipastikan akan masih berlanjut jika Maduro memenangi pilpres. Jadi, tak heran, kaum kaya akan loyal untuk terus mendukung Capriles menjadi Presiden Venezuela agar ada perubahan signifikan pascasosialisme bawaan Chavez menyelimuti negara itu selama 14 tahun.       "Tantangan Berat" Menurut sejumlah pengamat, Maduro begitu jor-joran menggunakan nama Chavez di setiap kampanyenya karena selain ini akan menguntungkan dirinya, dia juga tak ingin warisan Chavez selama 14 tahun terakhir ini musnah lantaran kepemimpinan berganti rezim. Maduro tak ingin sosialisme yang diwariskan Chavez hancur. Dia tak ingin ideologi negara berubah dari sosialisme menjadi neoliberalisme.  Akan tetapi, hasil jajak pendapat terbaru, kendati mengunggulkan Maduro (55 persen), ini tak menjamin mantan supir bus tersebut akan menang mudah. Dapat dipastikan persaingan antara Maduro dan Capriles pada pesta demokrasi 14 April ini akan sangat ketat. Menurut sejumlah analis, tipisnya keunggulan Maduro itu ada kaitannya dengan situasi ekonomi Venezuela yang saat ini sangat parah dengan tingkat inflasi sudah mencapai dua digit. Selain itu, pembangunan infrastruktur seperti perumahan, jalan raya dan rel kereta api yang sempat menjadi janji kampanye Chavez, tak sepenuhnya terealisasi.  Salah satu projek Chavez yang masih belum rampung itu adalah Jembatan Maracaibo. Guru Besar Ilmu Teknik Sipil Universitas Venezuela, Celia Herrera, yang menjadi penasihat Capriles mengatakan, peletakan batu pertama pembangunan jembatan di kota terbesar kedua di Venezuela itu, sudah dilakukan Chavez pada 2006 lalu. Setahun kemudian,kata Prof Herrera, Chavez kembali melakukan hal serupa untuk kedua kali. Namun, sejak itu, tak ada lagi kelanjutan pembangunan jembatan tersebut. "Sejak 2007 itu, pembangunan jembatan berhenti total," ujar Herrera lagi. Diduga, salah satu penyebab terbengkalainya pembangunan tersebut adalah korupsi. "Ribuan kali, pemerintah petahana berjanji akan mulai mengecor, tapi sampai sekarang itu tak pernah dilakukan," ujar Herrera lagi kepada AP, Jumat (12/4) seperti dilansir Yahoo News.  Selain soal bangunan belum jadi, suplai listrik dan air juga sering bermasalah.  Salah seorang warga Caracas, Pedro Martinez, mengatakan, hampir setiap hari listrik matik tiga kali sehari. "Listrik di sini sering byar pet. Ini sangat mengesalkan karena terjadi hampir tiap hari," ujarnya seraya membawa lilin yang ditempatkan dekat dengan reporter AP yang saat itu mencatat hasil wawancaranya.  Semua masalah tersebut telah membuat banyak warga Venezuela kesal dan mengalihkan dukungan kepada Capriles yang selama ini berjanji untuk memulihkan perekonomian Venezuela, termasuk Martinez yang mengaku akan memilih Capriles dengan harapan akan membawa perbaikan ekonomi di negara miskin itu.  Tak heran, masalah listrik, air dan banyaknya projek pembangunan yang belum jadi semasa era Chavez itu, menjadi  keuntungan buat kampanye Capriles dalam memenangkan hati warga Venezuela. Pokoknya semua projek Chavez yang belum rampung, termasuk pembangunan rumah sakit ibu hamil dan rel kereta api Maracay menjadi senjata Capriles untuk memenangi pilpres 14 April 2013.  Capriles dalam kampanyenya terakhir, Kamis (11/4) sebelum minggu tenang, kepada ribuan pendukungnya di  Caracas mengatakan, dia adalah pilihan terbaik untuk mengaktifkan kembali perekonomian Venezuela yang selama beberapa tahun terakhir ini melempem. "Jika kalian ingin punya masa depan, kita harus mengubah pemerintahan yang ada saat ini," kata Capriles. Menyadari problema yang ditinggalkan Chavez itu akan menjadi tikaman buat kampanyenya, Maduro pun selama ini memang selalu menghindar untuk menyebut projek-projek pembangunan yang belum rampung itu. Kendati saat berkampanye di negara bagian Apure, dia tak bisa menghindar dari isu tersebut sehingga dia meminta maaf kepada warga setempat atas penundaan sejumlah projek tersebut dan berjanji akan melanjutkan itu segera jika dia terpilih sebagai presiden mendatang.  "Perintah" Kendati dukungan terhadap Maduro menurun, secara mayoritas, di banyak jajak pendapat, dia masih diunggulkan memenangi pilpres 14 April ini. Ini memang tak terlepas dari amanat Chavez sebelum wafat yang meminta rakyatnya untuk memilih Maduro sebagai penggantinya. "Itu adalah perintah bagi kita untuk menghormati sang pemimpin karismatik dan semua kaum papa yang selama ini menjadi pendukung setianya," kata staf PLN Caracas,  Efren Perez. Menurut Perez, amanat Chavez itu harus dilaksanakan karena itu adalah perintah. "Kita harus memilih Maduro, Mengapa? Karena itu adalah perintah dari Chavez," ujarnyalagi. Bisa jadi, perintah itu pula yang membuat Maduro, kendati posisinya saat ini tak terlalu aman, akan mmapu berhasil mendulang pundi-pundi suara kaum papa di negara itu yang memang menjadi kelompok mayoritas. Kendari di antara mereka saat ini banyak juga yang sudah mulai tak puasdengan kondisi Venezuela saat ini dan ingin perubahan. Akan tetapi, apapun hasilnya pada pemilu 14 April, baik Capriles maupun Maduro akan menghadapi tantangan yang jauh lebih berat ketimbang pendahulunya. Jika mereka ingkar janji, rakyat Venezuela tak segan untuk melawannya. Ini berbeda dengan sosok Chavez yang memang sangat disegani sehingga banyak projek pembangunan di era Chavez yang  belum usai, warga tak pernah memrotes itu saat chavez masih hidup  lantaran segan. Warga memang sangat mengkultuskan Chavez sehingga dia sering disebut sebagai Kristusnya kaum miskin. Warga baru mulai berani mengeluarkan unek-unek mereka setelah Chavez meninggal dunia. Segala keluhan pun keluar, mulai dari soal listrik yang sering byar pet sampai pembangunan jembatan yang tak kunjung usai.  Namun demikian, di atas segalanya, kendati Maduro diungulkan menang tipis, tak ada kalkulasi yang pasti dalam politik. Apapun bisa terjadi. Jadi, kita tunggu saja sampai rakyat Venezuela menunaikan hak pilihnya pada hari Minggu (14/4) ini. (Huminca/"PR")***

Cosmopolitans It’s not just me, you and everyone we know. Citizens of the world have moral obligations to a wider circle of humanity by Nigel Warburton

Who should we care about: queuing for food in Haiti. Photo by William Daniels/Panos Nigel Warburton is a senior lecturer in philosophy at the Open University and the founder member of the Humanist Philosophers Group. His latest book is A Little History of Philosophy. source here Near the opening of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man(1916), James Joyce's alter ego Stephen Dedalus opens the flyleaf of his geography textbook and examines what he has written there: Stephen Dedalus Class of Elements Clongowes Wood College Sallins County Kildare Ireland Europe The World The Universe Most of us will, no doubt, remember writing a similar extended address as children, following through the logic of this series of ever-larger locations. The last two entries in Dedalus's list are, obviously, redundant in any real address. Only an alien sending a postcard home from another universe would think to add them. We are all, in some loose sense, 'citizens of the world', or at least its inhabitants. And yet, as adults, we don't usually think about much outside our immediate surroundings. Typically, it is our nation that defines us geographically, and it is our family, friends, and acquaintances who dominate our social thinking. If we think about the universe, it is from an astronomical or from a religious perspective. We are locally focused, evolved from social apes who went about in small bands. The further away or less visible other people are, the harder it is to worry about them. Even when the television brings news of thousands starving in sub-Saharan Africa, what affects me deeply is the item about a single act of violence in a street nearby. Life is bearable in part because we can so easily resist imagining the extent of suffering across the globe. And if we do think about it, for most of us that thinking is dispassionate and removed. That is how we as a species live. Perhaps it's why the collective noun for a group of apes is a 'shrewdness'. Yet there is a tradition that stretches back to the fourth century BCE that encourages us to see ourselves not as citizens of a state or nation, but of the world. It began with the eccentric philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (today's Sinop is in modern Turkey). Sometimes known as Diogenes the Cynic, he should not be confused with his namesake, Diogenes Laertius, whose account of the life of Diogenes the Cynic is the fullest that has survived. Our Diogenes famously renounced all worldly wealth, begged for his food and slept in a kind of empty storage jar that he would roll from place to place. Known as 'the dog' (the Greek word gave us the name 'Cynic'), he defecated at the theatre, masturbated in public, and cocked his leg to urinate on some youths who teased him by barking and throwing bones to him. Diogenes was certainly a philosopher, albeit a quirky one, and he was respected as such. But today we would probably see him as a cross between a satirical comedian and a homeless performance artist. Diogenes believed in expressing his philosophy through creative actions. He told people what he thought, but he also showed them. When Plato was teaching a class of eager students that man was 'a featherless biped', Diogenes turned up brandishing a plucked chicken and shouting 'Look, I've brought you a man!' Plato called him a 'mad Socrates'. He used to wander the Athenian marketplace in full daylight, carrying a lit lantern and claiming to be looking for an honest man — which, of course, he would never find. Alexander the Great visited him at home in his storage jar and asked whether there was anything he'd like. Diogenes replied to the most powerful person on the planet: 'Yes, please move, you're blocking my sunlight.' Unfazed, Alexander said that if he wasn't Alexander, he'd have liked to be Diogenes. Diogenes replied: 'Yes, and if I wasn't Diogenes, I'd like to be Diogenes too.' It's wishful thinking to imagine that transition to a world government could be achieved without triggering terrorism and war in the process He might have been the first Cynic, but Diogenes' cynicism was not a flood of relentless negativity and bile: unlike modern cynics, he had a profoundly idealistic streak. When asked where he was from, Diogenes said 'I'm a citizen of the world.' The word he used was kosmopolites,from which our 'cosmopolitan' derives, so strictly speaking he was expressing allegiance with the cosmos; but the term is usually translated as 'citizen of the world'. This would have sounded heretical to an Ancient Greek: strong allegiance to your city-state was meant to be the source of your identity, security, and self-respect. But Diogenes wasn't simply trying to scorn orthodoxy and shock those around him. His declaration was a signal that he took nature — the cosmos — as his guide to life, rather than the parochial and often arbitrary laws of a particular city-state. The cosmos had its own laws. Rather than being in thrall to local custom and kowtowing to those of high status, Diogenes was responsible to humanity as a whole. His loyalty was to human reason, unpolluted by petty concerns with wealth and power. And reason, as Socrates well knew, unsettled the status quo. It might be tempting to see this kind of thinking as simply a quaint notion from the museum of the history of ideas — a utopian fantasy. On the contrary, I suggest that it has a special relevance for us in the 21st century. Cynicism evolved into Stoicism, and aspects of Diogenes' cosmopolitanism found eloquent and refined Roman defenders in Seneca, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius. But it was Hierocles in the second century who provided the most useful way of understanding the basic concept. He described a set of concentric circles. The individual self was at the centre, then came the immediate family, then the extended family, neighbours, nearby towns, your nation, and eventually, on the outer ring, the entire human race. The task before us, Hierocles believed, was to draw these circles ever more tightly towards the centre. We were to move from a state of near-indifference to humanity as a whole, to a state where humankind was a major part of our daily concern. This target-like image vividly captures the problem for anyone attracted to cosmopolitanism. How can we see ourselves as citizens of the world when we seem so naturally drawn to the centre of Hierocles' model? Indeed, why would we even want to, since it seems to be going so much against our natural inclinations? Some religions have encouraged us to think this way for millennia, saying that it is God's will that we recognise a common maker and a common humanity. Christianity isn't alone in affirming the equality of individuals and the need to love everyone as you do yourself. Nonetheless, believers see themselves as subjects of God at least as much as citizens of the world and that is not what I understand by cosmopolitanism. Nor do I believe that we can only truly be cosmopolitans by having some form of world government with nations as federal states rather than independent entities, and that we should bring this about as soon as possible to avoid the catastrophes of war, environmental destruction and poverty. Few cosmopolitans seriously advocate this as the best way of achieving lasting peace. It is hard enough to keep a connected Europe from self-destruction, and it's wishful thinking to imagine that transition to a world government could be achieved without triggering terrorism and war in the process. Besides, even if world government were practically achievable, it is not something that many people would like to see realised, given the corrupting effects of power. What hope then for cosmopolitanism? Great hope, in my view. Not as a manifesto for world government, or a religious-based movement, but as a philosophical stance that transforms our outlook, a starting point for thinking about our place in the world. If a child was burning to death in the museum, who would save the painting first? It is a cliché to say that the internet has transformed the nature and speed of our links with people around the world, but it is true. I no longer need to rely on national news reporting to learn about what is happening around the globe: I can discover citizen journalists Tweeting, blogging, or uploading their stories to YouTube, and I can get access to Al Jazeera or Fox News as readily as I can to the BBC. This connection is not merely passive, delivered by journalists who alone have access to the people in far-off lands. I can, through comments on blogs, email, Facebook, and Twitter, interact with the people about whom the news is being written. I might even be able to Skype them. I can express opinions without having them filtered by the media. And it isn't only facts and angles on the news that we can share. We are connected by trade and outsourcing in ways that were unimaginable 10 years ago. Our fellow workers and collaborators might just as easily live in India as in London. In Republic.com (2001), the American legal scholar Cass Sunstein expressed the fear that the internet would make us more entrenched in our own prejudices, because of our ability to filter the information that we receive from it. We would find our own niches and create a kind of firewall to the rest of the world, allowing only selected angles and information: the 'Daily Me', as he put it. Racists would filter out anti-racist views, liberals wouldn't need to read conservatives and gun freaks could have their stance on the world confirmed. That risk might still exist for some. Yet even within conventional media, new voices are being heard, their videos and Tweets providing first-person, human stories with an immediacy that no second-hand report could achieve. And this is happening on a scale that is breathtaking. One source of evil in the world is people's inability to 'decentre' — to imagine what it would be like to be different, under attack from killer drones, or tortured, or beaten by state-controlled thugs at a protest rally. The internet has provided a window on our common humanity; indeed, it allows us to see more than many of us are comfortable to take in. Nevertheless, in principle, it gives us a greater connection with a wider range of people around the world than ever before. We can't claim ignorance if we have wi-fi. It remains to be seen whether this connection will lead to greater polarisation of viewpoints, or a new sense of what we have in common. In recent years, two Princeton-based philosophers, Peter Singer and Kwame Anthony Appiah, have presented competing views of our human connectedness. For Singer, it is obvious that suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care are bad, no matter who endures them or where they are located. If we could prevent such things occurring, he maintains, most of us would. Singer does not couch his arguments in terms of cosmopolitanism, but he does want to minimise suffering on a world scale. His utilitarian tradition gives equal weight to all those who are in need, without privileging those who happen to be most like us. Singer makes his case forcefully through a thought experiment designed to show that most of us share his assumptions. Imagine, he asks, that you are walking past a pond and hear a young child in trouble, drowning. You are wearing expensive shoes. Even so, you wouldn't hesitate to jump into the pond and rescue the child, no matter what it did to your shoes in the process. Why, then, he asks in his book The Life You Can Save (2009), don't you make a small sacrifice to your lifestyle and donate at least five per cent of your income to aid agencies? That alone would save numerous children from suffering and even death from curable disease and malnutrition. There are now an estimated 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty — almost a quarter of the world's population. If we see ourselves as citizens of the world, with responsibilities and concerns for suffering wherever we find it, surely we should follow Singer's line. We should do everything we can to help others rise above a threshold that will make life tolerable for them, even if this involves some sacrifice on our part: fewer exotic holidays; no expensive laptops, designer watches or diamond rings. Singer takes this point further, arguing that a rich philanthropist who donates millions of dollars to a museum to save a 13th-century painting by Duccio should really have spent that money saving children: if a child was burning to death in the museum, who would save the painting first? Yet for the price of a Duccio, one could save a whole football stadium of children. We only have an obligation to pay what is fair for us – we needn't feel bad if we fail to go beyond this There are numerous potential replies to this, most of which Singer pre-empts. One of the more challenging, however, comes from Appiah. A cosmopolitan figure himself (he combines British and Ghanaian parentage with US citizenship), Appiah is an eloquent defender of a notion of cosmopolitanism as universalism plus difference. He insists that all humans share a common biology and overlapping needs and desires. At the same time, he argues inCosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006), we can celebrate our diversity: cosmopolitanism does not entail homogeneity. Far from it. His ideal requires us to balance a recognition of our common humanity, and the moral obligations that follow from that, with our sense of where we have come from, where we belong. Appiah is sympathetic to the view that we have significant obligations to our fellow human beings wherever they are. He agrees that we should see ourselves as connected, our lives inextricably intertwined. Even so, he argues, Singer goes too far. For Appiah, the affluent have a duty to pay their fair share to alleviate extreme poverty around the world. But that needn't entail giving until you yourself become relatively poor. His point is that we only have an obligation to pay what is fair for us, and that we needn't feel bad if we fail to go beyond this. We in the West don't have to follow Diogenes' example of giving everything away and sleeping rough: 'If so many people in the world are not doing their share — and they clearly are not — it seems to me I cannot be required to derail my life to take up the slack.' Singer has responded to this with a variation on his pond thought experiment. What would you do if there were 10 children in the pond and 10 adults, including yourself, nearby? If only you and four others jumped in while the other five adults strolled on, you wouldn't just save your 'fair share' of one child and let the others drown, and no one would excuse you if you did that. Singer is convinced that our obligation to others goes far beyond our sense of a fair share of the solution. Is this a sticking point for cosmopolitanism? If you want to see yourself as a citizen of the world, as I think you should, does that mean you have to give up most of your worldly goods, forego opera, fine wine, live football, or any other expensive indulgences? Even if Singer is right about our moral obligations, there is a danger that the sacrifices he demands will just make the whole view unattractive. Who is ready to follow him even as far as donating five per cent of their annual income? This is a genuine philosophical problem about how to live. It is a serious challenge to complacency and indifference. And there are many ways of avoiding the problem, including embracing inconsistency — the 'living high and letting die' option. However, there is another, more acceptable solution ­— to recognise the power of Singer's arguments, and even his conclusions, without choosing the life of a latter-day Diogenes. We can each give at least our fair share, even if it isn't really such a consistent approach to world citizenship. We can recognise that our fair share is insufficient, that most of us fall short of ideal morality in many ways. That shouldn't stop us moving in the direction that Hierocles recommended. The more we can haul in that outer circle of humanity, the better for all. Published on 4 March 2013