Lisa Ramaci remembers that day well. First, she got an email. Then, six hours later, a phone call.

“I know what it feels like to get that phone call,” said Ramaci.

It was August 2nd, 2005, just three days after Ramaci’s husband, Iraq- based freelance reporter Steven Vincent, had penned a scathing op-ed in the New York Times on the increasing infiltration of Islamic extremists in the Basra police force. That day, Vincent and his Iraqi translator, Nouriya Itais, were kidnapped off the streets of Basra, in southern Iraq, by men in police uniforms, interrogated, tortured, and then five hours later, shot on the outskirts of the city. Itais survived, but Vincent did not.

Ramaci, who was married to Vincent for 10 years, believes that his groundbreaking work – he was the first journalist in Iraq to uncover Iraqi death squads – was his undoing.

“He was killed because they didn’t want what he was doing. Killed to shut him up.”

As Vincent’s story shows, Journalism can be risky. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an international organization dedicated to raising awareness about journalists under siege, 41 Journalists were killed due to their work as journalists in 2008. Already in 2009 eleven journalists have been killed, with Iraq still leading as the world’s deadliest place to be a journalist, but countries like North Korea, China, and Iran not far behind.

This issue shot to the forefront with last week’s kidnapping of two journalists working for Current TV, headquartered in San Francisco, on the North Korean-Chinese border. CPJ and Reporters with Borders, which works to raise awareness about press freedom internationally, have issued a petition calling for Laura and name’s unconditional release.

But the vast majority of those killed aren’t western journalists, or even foreign journalists, but locals reporting in their home countries. This is as true in Iraq as anywhere else.

“It’s mostly the local Iraqi press who are killed and abused, at a higher rate than western writers, but the media tends not to cover those local reporters,” said Tala Dowlatshahi, the New York bureau director for Reporters Without Borders.

After her husband’s death, Ramaci was disgusted to find out how even families of Iraqi journalists killed while working for wester new organizations were not given compensation.

“They put their lives on the line for western readers. We don’t know what the families go through. It speaks of an utter loss of humanity, if they’re killed, to look away, and to send no help to their families,” said Ramaci.

In the end, Ramaci doesn’t think that much could have been done to protect Vincent, or future reporters working independently in war zones. “If they want you, they will get you. In every single war, journalists are killed. They put themselves on the line.”

Dowlatshahi disagrees. She believes that proper training, often lacking, can help to prepare journalists for the most difficult situations, and that Iraq is improving, slowly, but steadily. 

“In Iraq, as the Government continues to establish itself, and becomes more democratized and developed, an inclusive press will be essential to cover recovery,” said Dowlatshahi.

She also believes there is a direct link between Democratization and press freedom.

“In every country that is militaristic or communistic, with a government that threatens open society, journalists are killed and abused,” said Dowlatshahi.

What is one of the worst countries in the world for journalists, according to Dowlatshahi? North Korea, where Ling and Lee are currently awaiting trial with a potential sentence of 10 years of manual labor.

Like Ling and Lee, Vincent often could be found on the front lines. An art critic until one event changed his life – September 11th, Vincent gave up his job to report on what he considered more pressing and timely issues. Two years later he was in Iraq.

“He wanted to do something after 9/11,” said Ramaci.

The Newseum, a museum in Washington DC, seeks to honor the historic role Vincent and his colleagues have played with their Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial, a multistory glass pane structure, with over 1800 names engraved of every known journalists killed in the line of duty, from 1837 to the present. 

And there is plenty of space for more. Because if history is any key, as long as there is a story to be told, there will reporters like Vincent who will seek it out. At the same time, there will always will be those, like his still-unnamed killers, who will do anything to stop it.

Maybe it’s cause during my first year at USC, we were ranked #1 in both polls. And #3 in the BCS.

This year, USC is just sitting on the outside. Instead, you have the top four teams being Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida. Conveniently, they’ve played or will play each other in a perfect 1 vs. 4, 2 vs. 3 playoff. To top it off, the games were played at neutral sites so there is no home field advantage arguments. Let’s look at the results.

SEC Championship Game, #1 Alabama vs. #4 Florida. Rightfully (barring any rivalry week upsets) the winner of this game will go to the BCS championship. Though I still hate that Florida is in even though they lost to a lesser ranked team AT HOME than USC, I’m willing to turn the eye.

The other game already happened.

Red River Rivalry, Texas 45, Oklahoma 35. Decisive victory for the Longhorns.

So obviously the title game matchup should be – Alabama/Florida vs….Oklahoma?!

…

Yes, that makes perfect sense.

One more stat – let’s look how those two teams did the last time they made the BCS title game, against yours truly USC Trojans.

2004 – USC 55, Oklahoma 19

2005 – Texas 41, USC 38

Here’s to chaos (Auburn over Alabama, OSU over Oklahoma, Mizzou over Texas, and FSU over Florida). And a playoff.

That being said, I’m a little scared of the chattering classes in DC.

Evan Bayh? Tim Kaine? Bleh.

Obama needs a reinforcing pick, not a Joe Lieberman esque attempt to fill-in-the-holes.

So, Barack, in my opinion, you have to do what Bill Clinton did – a reinforcing pick. And there is only truly one I can think of, so here, I am announcing my top choice for Barack Obama vice president.

Ready?

It’s a Governor. From a large square state, who’s a proven outsider and knows to win, with popularity, in a red bastion.

Figured it out?

No, it’s not Kathleen Sebelius, though I would be happy with her. I want Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana.

Schweitzer would be a superb, reinforcing pick. He represents change from out west, a down to earth, incredibly popular and effective Governor of a deep red state that could actually go for Barack. What more, he speaks Arabic and knows the middle east intimately, having lived there. He won’t overshadow Barack on foreign policy (he was agains the war from the beginning) and will be an effective Governing partner.

The big negative is his support for liquid coal, but we’ll get over that. So Obama, I hope that you are truly playing it close to heart, and that you will not listen to the chattering class and pick a true VP. Not Kaine, not Biden, not the worst of them all, Evan Bayh. Let’s aim high – and really change the Democratic party. Governor Brian Schweitzer. Our next Vice President.

That morning I turned on the TV to check ESPN. Instead, I found out the world I’d be entering college into a world completely different than the one I’d graduated high school from. The first thought on my mind as I saw the twin towers in flames – “please, let it not be Arab terrorists.”

I want you all to think for a second – on those first few days, when America was twisted inside out. I knew about the Japanese internments during World War II, of the history of slavery and subsequent Jim Crow segregation that had only ended when my dad was my age. As a brown American, not of Arab origin, but fully aware of the fact that most Americans could not tell the difference, I honestly wondered for a few days whether America would accept me anymore.

Fear gripped me.

Osama Bin Laden. He was everywhere. Terrorism had become communism of our era. My generation now had it’s JFK moment. Fear was pervasive, onmipresent. Not far from where me and my dad spent the following night, September 12th, at a hotel where the receptionist’s eyes were glued to pictures of Bin Laden on the news, Balbir Singh, a Sikh-American, was murdered in an hate crime for refusing to remove his turban.

It could very easily have been me. That was the world those days.

More below the fold

Crossposted at OneMillionStrong and DailyKos

Imagine, in those days, if someone had come up to and told you that the next President of the United States would be a brown man with the name Barack Hussein Obama.

Impossible. Never. Not in this country, not after this. Not in my lifetime.

State Senator Barack Obama speaking at an antiwar rally in October of 2002.

From The Audacity of Hope.

I had lunch with a media consultant who had been encouraging me for some time to run for statewide office. As it happened, the lunch was scheduled for late September 2001.

“You realize, don’t you, that the political dynamics have changed,” he said as he picked at his salad.

“What do you mean?” I asked, knowing full well what he meant. We both looked down at the newspaper beside him. There, on the front page, was Osama bin Laden.

“Hell of a thing, isn’t it?” he said, shaking his head. “Really bad luck. You can’t change your name, of course. Voters are suspicious of that kind of thing. Maybe if you were at the start of your career, you know, you could use a nickname or something. But now…” His voice trailed off and he shrugged apologetically before signaling the waiter to bring us the check.

As time passed, my fear abated – or maybe just grew used to it. I felt no backlash personally, though the Bush administration’s illegal detentions of international students were an ominous sign of things to come, I slowly got used to life in the new America. I cringed, though, as I saw President Bush take advantage of Americans shock to push the country in the wrong direction, launching a war in Afghanistan and then, before finishing, preparing to launch another in Iraq. Democrats were scared, and no one was speaking up against the obvious – until a little known Governor from a small northeastern state proclaimed that he was running for President. I became an enthusiastic supporter of Governor Howard Dean, only to have my hopes crushed in Iowa.

I was in Ireland for a summer when my mom called me to tell me about the Democratic Convention and this amazing speech delivered by a “Brack Obama.”

“Who?”

“He’s a Senator. Black. From Illinois. He was incredible,” she told me. I was surprised – I thought that there were no black Senators in the Senate. Turns out I was right.

Obama? What an unfortunate name.

Less than four years later, I was there standing barely 10 feet away, in Des Moines, Iowa, volunteering for GOTC, on caucus night listening as Barack Obama spoke to a crowd of over 5,000, having resoundingly won the caucuses – in the second whitest state in America.

When historians look back at the last seven years, they will wonder how a President entrusted with unprecedented international goodwill and record high approval ratings somehow managed to throw it all away, destroy our standing around the world, and become the least popular President in modern history. And then they will wonder how, out of the ashes of Bush’s failures, a skinny guy with a funny, Muslim sounding name managed to overcome the odds and build the greatest grassroots movement in American history.

What I don’t want them to wonder is how, against impossible odds, an aging, gaff-prone, uninspiring Senator from Arizona was able to overcome even greater odds – an unpopular incumbent over his shoulder, a crumbling economy of which he knew little, and an unpopular war which he supported, to claim the Presidency. That is not how this story ends, and the America that I know and love, the one I believe in, is ready to turn the page on the past and move into the future. Yes we can – and yes, we will. There’s no other way. We’ve come so far, to fail now would truly destroy the American dream.

Cause I’m also a skinny kid with a funny name. But, except for a few weeks back in 2001, I always thought I could do whatever I wanted. It’s good to see that my hopes weren’t mistaken.

When I ran for the U.S. Senate the assumption was that anyone’s name that was close to “Osama” doesn’t stand a chance. So if somebody thought that tacking on “Hussein” in there would be a killer, then I think they underestimate the American people and the seriousness of the problems we face.

Senator Barack Obama , Newsweek, January 1, 2007

The journey to change America.

Last night, we took a powerful first step in that direction.

I travel with a slightly different perspective than most travelers. The world is a patchwork of disparate peoples, each with their own dynamic and fascinating history – and I only wanted to tap into this great collective of knowledge. So I went, from the picturesque battlefields of Gallipoli, where the seeds were planted that led to the great ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia only a decade ago. I visited the remote kingdom of Nepal, where the rapidly changing weather patterns were wreaking havoc on subsidence crops (a precursor to the food crisis today, I now realize).

I realized what power I had – I was from America. Six years of Bush had taken it’s toll on me, but I still believed that I could make a different. I just hadn’t tried hard enough.

Change isn’t easy. And last night, we took our first step towards Change we can believe in, and for the world, an America they can look up to once again. The next step – beating John McCain.