By Dan Bloom
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan — Evan Centanni makes maps. Global maps, regional maps, geopolitical maps, Middle East maps, conflict maps. trouble-spot maps.
Based inthe American Northwest, Centanni grew up there and double-majored in linguistics and international studies at the University of Oregon.
Welcome to Political Geography Now (www.PolGeoNow.com), Centanni’s brainchild of a website that chronicles changes to the world’s countries, borders, and capitals, as well as real territorial control in conflict zones and disputed territories.
In a recent email interview, when asked about the map situation in the Middle East region, Centanni told the San Diego Jewish World that he tries to steer clear of taking a position on how things “should” be.
“But I do have a string of coverage of the claimed State of Palestine on the map site, including a popular article titled ‘Is Palestine Really a Country?'” he said.
“I’ve done my best to give readers a straight answer to the question, without letting value judgments from either side of the debate get in the way.”
When asked what his website aims for, Centanni said:
“PolGeoNow is for anyone with an interest in the world’s countries, but it’s also designed to be resource for professionals in the fields of geopolitics, political science, and political geography — that is, the geography of states, borders, and territories. It might be graduate students or professors, media analysts or even diplomatic staff, potentially all the way up to top-level policy-makers.
More than half of the content on the site is free, but some in-depth reports require a paid subscription, or can be purchased individually, Centanni, 28, said.
“There’s a Facebook page and a Twitter feed as well, which promote our content and provide brief updates on events we’re not able to cover in-depth,” he added.
When asked who uses the website, Centanni said he could not list all the names but could say that one of his site’s longtime readers is Mike Beidler, who was until recently a U.S. Navy diplomat (Deputy Regional Affairs Branch Chief and Middle East Branch Chief for the Navy’s International Engagement Division) and is now doing international business development for a major international aerospace corporation.
In addition, Joshua Keating, an editor at Foreign Policy magazine has also engaged with PolGeoNow via the Twitter page.
The site was earlier based in Taiwan, where Centanni was living with his Taiwanese wife, but the couple has returned to Oregon now. When he was working in Taiwan, a hot spot in world geopolitics, Centanni learned to be well-positioned to be of use to journalists and academics in Asia and across the globe.
At the moment, the greatest amount of interaction comes in relation to his site’s reporting on territorial control in Syria and Iraq, he said.
Israel is on his radar, too, of course.
“Recently I was in contact with Noah Bonsey, senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, who chose PolGeoNow’s Syria map to illustrate the organization’s recent report on the civil war,”
Centanni said. “I was once contacted by the Canadian embassy in Turkey, asking for information about the control situation along the Syrian-Turkish border, and my maps have also appeared on Bloomberg TV and the Bloomberg Terminal investors’ subscription service.”
This is a website with global potential, and run with a laptop out of a home in Oregon. PolGeoNow could help put Israel on the map in a new and more nuanced way, and Centanni is getting a sense of the future of his site already.
To grow the site, which is a very small operation for now, Centanni is looking into larger-scale cooperation with press outlets and geopolitical consulting organizations worldwide, he said.
“At the moment the staff is me, two paid researchers, and some occasional contributing writers,” Centanni said.
According to Centanni, PolGeoNow doesn’t take sides in political or moral debates.
“In any conflict or disagreement over borders, we report impartially on the real situation and the claims of all parties,” he said.
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Bloom, based in Taiwan, is a freelance writer and inveterate web surfer. Your comments on this story may be placed in the box below or sent directly to the author at dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com