Port Moresby doesn't appear on any of the lists, top ten or top fifty, Richard.

Kabul is number one and Baghdad features on most lists but the majority of the dangerous cities seem to be in South America.

I happily wander around Mosbi on foot and travel in taxis or PMVs and have never really felt threatened. I think if anything happened people would quickly come to your aid. Unlike Australians Papua New Guineans don't turn a blind eye to people in strife.

The biggest worry is from petty thieves, rogue cops and drunks.

When you talk about 'liveable' cities its a different matter. Mosbi is up there with the worst. As Peter Kranz points out, get beyond the glitzy shopping malls and hotels and you are in squalid third world conditions.

Phil, it stings here.

PNG politicians and the people are so obsessed about the 'big name' and the prosperity of their tribal groups and to some extent their provinces of origin. Fat cats and cronies do not give a damn shit about the best interest of the independent state of Papua New Guinea.

The pandora box has just been opened on the eve of the 40th anniversary. I assume anarchy is on its way out of the pandora box.

Chris,
How true. I hope politicians who go to school(while a member of parliament) to get their 1st or second degrees understand this.

I have just finished reading the excellent Penguin History of China since 1850 by Jonathon Fenby.

What is most striking about China's history is how modern China, in many important respects, is governed and controlled using exactly the same methods as were used during the Imperial era.

Essentially, Fenby mounts a powerful argument that the Chinese Communist Party has become exactly the same sort of authoritarian regime that it strove to replace.

His thesis is that the sheer weight of China's historic experience and culture has slowly but surely brought about this transformation, regardless of the CCP's increasingly desperate efforts to resist it.

I have lately begun to realise the ability of deeply entrenched cultural norms and values to both resist change and continue to shape how peoples and nations actually work.

For countries and peoples who were colonised, this has frequently meant that upon becoming independent, they have at once begun to manifest many of their pre-colonial cultural values and influences.

These are typically presented by the leadership as reflecting something special or unique about them or the country that justifies behaviours that, in some cases, would not have been permitted in the colonial era.

Indeed, the former colonial power is often used as a very convenient scape goat for problems that, in fact, have very little to do with the colonial era.

Thus, in Africa, the historic autocratic tribalism and predisposition to warfare to seize power and territory have all too often reasserted themselves to the great detriment of those who the CCP still describe as “the masses”.

In a PNG context, the so-called Melanesian Way has frequently been touted by politicians as both a unique and inherently virtuous way to approach decision making and governance.

Unhappily, the application of this supposedly traditional philosophy seems not to have produced the sort of harmonious, productive and happy society that its proponents claim it will necessarily produce.

To my mind there never was an identifiable Melanesian Way in pre-colonial times. Sure, there were and are certain cultural similarities across PNG, but these fall a long way short of providing a solid basis for a single, uniquely Melanesian approach to the business of government.

As Phil has pointed out, the ugly truth is that the power seeking, greed, corruption and incompetence on such vivid display in PNG merely reflects how humans tend to behave at their worst.

To the extent that this behaviour has a uniquely PNG character it lies in the way in which wantoks are made complicit in the process through the use of traditional means, i.e. handouts of one sort or another, declamatory rhetoric and other ostentatious displays of largesse.

In this sense at least, there is indeed a Melanesian Way, but it leads to grinding poverty, inequality, poor health and lack of opportunity for the huge majority of Papua New Guineans.