So, dear reader, of what current world horror might you still be unaware? Concerning what form of hidden or visible violence might you require further documentation? Just where might there be gaps in your knowledge of the perils and pitfalls of everyday survival for the vast majority of humanity? This Atlas has a ready answer for all your needs, and a harrowing answer it is too.

In case anyone needs reminding, the world isn't a terribly nice place; in fact it is very scary indeed, no place for the faint-hearted. Political leadership everywhere is unsentimental and ruthless by nature. Machiavelli told the Prince long ago that he must do whatever is necessary to remain Prince or step down. The whole point of geo-politics is to make one's own State more powerful, wealthy and feared than the States of others. As Karl von Clausewitz said, "War is an act of violence whose goal is to force the adversary to do our will". He also noted that war should always be a last resort as one can choose among many means of waging warfare and of forcing the adversary to do one's will. You will find most of these means in the following pages.

You will also discover the intended as well as the unintended consequences of the relentless drive towards wealth, power and the capacity to impose fear. General de Gaulle remarked, "States have no friends, only interests". And while we are still citing the canon of recognised authorities on the subject, let us also recall Nietzsche, who called the State "the coldest of cold monsters". In this section of the Atlas, the gallery of monsters is on full display.

The most classic strategy in the drive to power, although it is the one Clausewitz recommended avoiding whenever possible, is war. Here you will find it explicitly accompanied by its inevitable handmaidens, the "military instruments of domination"--the bases, the fleets, the tools of political encirclement, the formation of blocs.

All the structures of worldwide power deployment profit from ready supplies of armaments. While nuclear bombs may be reserved for the wealthy, even the poor can afford landmines; many also produce them in great quantities for sale to others, in order that upwards of twenty-five thousand innocents may be killed or maimed yearly. An eloquent map distinguishes between present and former landmine producer countries and shows how new suppliers have been quick to benefit from "market opportunities".

Just as a great deal of money is made from these arms, so it is from trafficking in drugs or in young women. Both these markets are flourishing. The drug market shows that the United States has little to show for its eradication programmes as drugs are more plentiful than ever. Since the laws of supply and demand do not cease to function at the borders of the legitimate economy, drug prices are in free fall, due to the abundance of producers. As for the merchants of sex-slaves, one cannot help noticing that the maps point to supplier countries that also happen to be prominent candidates for entry into the European Union. Nor can one help wondering when the EU might make serious policing of this trafficking a condition for further entry negotiations.

The single biggest change in the colours of world maps over the past quarter-century has, of course, been the Soviet earthquake and the collapse of its empire. Understanding how the world now looks from Moscow and Eastern Europe is one particularly useful and innovative approach in an Atlas which boasts many such innovations, including a new perspective on the multi-coloured revolutions in the former USSR.

Could one answer to the world's ills be Foreign Direct Investment? Seeing how little FDI Africa attracts, one might be tempted to say so. But when one looks at the tentacular spread of the giant American distribution chain Wal-mart, the world's largest and doubtless one its worst employers; and the gradual takeover of everyone's access to information by giant conglomerates, now able to hold even wealthy governments to ransom, FDI seems more a curse than a blessing.

As Africans know, when elephants fight, the grass is trampled. Today more and more of earth's inhabitants are nothing but random blades of grass, born in the wrong place at the wrong time. At the same time Europe has expanded its borders and its population, it has increased its attraction for the hapless people stuck in the failing States of Africa. The American dream still exerts its pull on the growing ranks of the poor in Central and South America. For the past half century the West has done everything in its power to make the lives of such people impossible. It has encouraged the accumulation of mountains of debt; it has kept its aid to a minimum, with most of it conditional; it has underpaid the exports of the captive countries of the South; it has supported rotten regimes and allowed the proliferation of multiple financial crises--and after all this, the West feigns surprise when countless desperate immigrants try to storm its shores or refugees overwhelm the inadequate resources of relief organisations.

And what of those attempting to stand above the world's mayhem and sometimes alleviate it? The UN High Commission for Refugees still valiantly tries to help some of the unfortunate who have been turned out of their homes by the uncontrollable forces of geo-politics. Its parent organisation, the United Nations, manages to keep its head just barely above water despite the efforts of the United States and other member countries in serious arrears to keep it cash-starved, discredited and powerless.

The pages of the geo-political section of the Atlas do, however, reveal, in a similar stark and economical form, some quite excellent news. Latin America once provided a seemingly inexhaustible source of military dictatorships, their iron rule unfailingly supported by the great Northern neighbour. Look at the map of the continent now: it is utterly transformed and almost completely coloured a hopeful shade of pink--all in a mere five or six years. Non-Governmental Organisations are flourishing and although some remain deeply ambiguous, others are clearly bringing rays of light to a sombre world. The map of Social Forums is especially welcome--another development impossible to imagine a decade ago.

Is history accelerating, or does it just seem that way? Whatever pessimism greater knowledge of geo-politics may inspire, a close examination of the data concentrated here also shows that money and power do not always win; that people, standing together, can also change the maps of their countries, their continents and their lives.