When international storms hit — literally or figuratively — I always turn to GV in addition to the typical wire reports. So last night, when I checked it out to get some ear-to-the-ground reports on Georgia and Russia, I wasn’t disappointed. They had reliably packaged blogger coverage of the South Ossetia crisis, complete with a primer on the region and aggregated and translated posts from regional bloggers, like this one from Georgian blogger Alan Tskhurbaev.

As we at Change.org build our social issue blogs from the ground up (launch in September!), I continue to be fascinated and inspired by GV’s spot-on coverage.

And one crazy, quasi-related thing:

I found out — from Twitter! — that my friend and colleague Noel Hidalgo, who was in China covering the Olympics as a citizen journalist, was deported for livestreaming a protest in Tiananmen Square. He’s safe at home now, but wow what a journey.

It isn’t because he was illegally spitting in the streets. When he’s not racing on his blades of glory, Cheek is an organizer of Team Darfur, a group of athletes raising awareness of the genocide in Darfur.

See, China has sorta, kinda been helping fund the Sudanese military during the time of the Darfurian genocide. China sold Sudan 90% of its arms purchases from 2003-2006, the same time those wonderful janjaweed were beginning to destroy rural Darfurian villages (Mussolini’s Fallacy has more about that and other support for Sudan).

For the small crime of pushing awareness of the situation in Darfur, Cheek won’t be participating in the Olympics. Can’t wait to tune in to it all next week!