Security and Threat Potential at the Olympics

As NBC's Russian Security Analyst for the 2014 Sochi Olympics, I was asked during a recent interview what I thought the chances are that there would be no attacks during the games, and my answer was a quick and unequivocal “zero percent.” The best way to understand the threats facing the Sochi Olympics is to use some of the concepts discussed at length in my book The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus; in particular the Most Dangerous Courses of Action (MDCOA) and the Most Probable Courses of Action (MPCOA). There will be an attack associated with the Olympics, but for it to be a “successful” attack (from the insurgents and terrorists points of view), it doesn’t have to occur anywhere near Sochi.

But before we talk about what the different groups operating in the North Caucasus might do, we have to first look at the situation from their point of view and see what targets would be available to them.

My initial assessment of security at the Olympics has remained unchanged, especially after having spent a few days in Sochi, Adler, and Krasnaya Polyana assessing the venues. Although it is not impossible for terrorists or lone wolves to strike the Games directly, security at the sporting events is very tight and it would require a significant amount of planning, coordination, and logistics to pull off any type of attack, much less a major one. And because there are plenty of “soft” targets that would yield the same desired outcome, I think it extremely unlikely that athletes or spectators will be in danger while at the Games themselves.

However, outside the venues is a different story. Metal detectors and security personnel screen everyone who enters a hotel, police and military patrols routinely check the perimeters, and a heavy static security presence in the city provides its own deterrent. However, a single committed terrorist could gain entry to any of these hotels. Restaurants, bars, and clubs (where large groups of people will inevitably end up each evening), have only the barest of security and are largely dependent on the ubiquitous police patrols to try and prevent would-be attackers from getting near them.

And while it’s necessary to present your credentials before boarding any train or bus that takes fans to any Olympic venue, the roads leading to the mountain venues are open to anyone—despite the traffic police stationed every 400 yards along the route—meaning that it would be relatively easy for a car full of terrorists to drive to Krasnaya Polyana (a stone’s throw away from Olympic hotels and restaurants) and target any large group on any given evening.  This is, of course, contingent upon two additional factors: any terrorists getting through the “Ring of Steel” surrounding the environs of Sochi, which extends about 4 hours in every direction around Sochi; and having established a pre-positioned cache of weapons and explosives within the area before the “Wall of Steel” was established.

The Caucasus Emirate (CE, also known as the Imarat Kavkaz, IK) is a dangerous organization, and parts of their organization have been responsible for some of the most infamous and horrific terrorist attacks in history: notably, the seizure of the Dubrovka Theater in 2002 (the Nord-Ost incident) and the Beslan School Shooting (2004) where more than 300 people were killed, most of them children and some attending their very first day of school. More importantly, by looking at some of their past actions, it's easy to see that it is entirely within the realm of possibility for them to conduct a high-profile attack. Two particular incidents described in The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus indicate this threat: the assassination of Akhmad Kadyrov and the Third Battle of Grozny.  Both demonstrate the ability of the CE to plan well in advance, while the first is one of the best examples in history of a targeted assassination at a sporting event (burying the explosives in the concrete below the VIP bleachers and then waiting months until Kadyrov showed up for an event), the second shows that the CE knows how to effectively utilize caches in order to circumvent security forces and pass through “walls of steel” in order to later conduct devastatingly coordinated attacks within a “secure” area. It was, in fact, the Third Battle of Grozny that resulted in Chechnya achieving defacto independence from Russia from 1996-1999. This is the same organization that is responsible for the dual suicide bombings in the Russian city of Volgograd in December of 2013.

The same factors that made those incidents possible, most notably the lack of what I refer to as Civil Infrastructure (in the forms of extreme corruption, the high number of conscripts, and unprofessionalism in the security forces), as well as the access (provided by massive construction projects) are still extant right now at the Sochi Games.

Something will happen, but probably not in the direct environs of the Olympics. Nonetheless, Russia is just too big to protect everything, and if readers of the book will remember, it is standard procedure for insurgents to attack where government forces are weakest, while terrorist cells must attack targets that will get the most attention. With the eyes of the entire world now on Sochi, almost anywhere in Russia is a possible target for terrorism.

 

 

Robert Schaefer is a U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) and Eurasian Foreign Area Officer. For over 25 years he has served in a variety of special units and participated in virtually every U.S. overseas operation since 1990. He has extensive experience with counterinsurgency and counterterrorist operations around the world and has lived and worked in many countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia as a diplomat and adviser to foreign governments and militaries. He is uniquely qualified to analyze the conflict in the North Caucasus because of his first-hand experience planning and executing counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism operations in the Caucasus region. LTC Schaefer is the 2001 recipient of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and the Office of Strategic Services Society's Award of Excellence as the U.S. Special Operations Command Person of the Year for his historic achievements with Russian airborne forces. He obtained his MA from Harvard University's Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia program, and is the host of National Public Radio's Memorial Day Special 2007–2012. He is a member of the Editorial Board for the Caucasus Survey, a consultant to several government agencies and a frequent commentator for news programs and seminars focusing on the North Caucasus insurgency. His critically-acclaimed book The Insurgency in Chechnya and the North Caucasus: From Gazavat to Jihad won multiple national awards and was named to Kirkus Reviews "Best of 2011," and the "Top 150 Books on Terrorism and Counterterrorism" by the journal Perspectives on Terrorism.

 

Remembering Nelson Mandela, 1918–2013

The passing of Nelson Mandela is sure to inspire a global outpouring of mourning, testimonials, and commentary, perhaps on a scale without precedent in the age of the Internet and social media. His life story and character have long moved and inspired many millions of people. Mandela received a life sentence for treason in 1964 for his anti-apartheid activism and spent 27 years in prison. After his release in 1990, he began leading negotiations for a peaceful end to apartheid with F.W. de Klerk, then-president of South Africa. In 1994, Mandela was elected president in the nation's first free multiracial elections. Shortly thereafter, he instigated a truth and reconciliation process that sought forgiveness in forging a new multiracial democracy.

Mandela stepped down from the presidency after one term and became a global statesman. He devoted his time over the next few years to peace negotiations in other African countries, charitable work, and advocacy for such causes as human rights, poverty eradication, and HIV/AIDS prevention. In 1993, Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid-era president, shared the Nobel Peace Prize. Mandela's leadership was not without criticism in some aspects, and South Africa today still struggles with inequality, corruption, and violent crime, while the African National Congress (ANC) he led is a divided party. However, he leaves behind a functional democracy and sub-Saharan Africa's largest economy—outcomes that were hardly assured in the last days of apartheid.

Mandela is without dispute among the 20th century's most significant, influential, and revered figures, and will be studied globally for many years to come. In South Africa he remains both Madiba (his Xhosa clan name) and "The Father of the Nation."

New Primary Resource Collection: Explorers of the American West

We are pleased to announce the addition of a rich collection of primary resources to our United States Geography Online Solution!

Sacajawea is depicted guiding the Lewis and Clark expedition through the Rocky Mountains in this painting.

Users have access to a plethora of fascinating and illuminating primary sources such as journal entries and artwork. The new collection includes:

• 60 journal excerpts from some of the most notable explorers of the 19th century
• 50 pieces of primary source media, which includes artwork from the expeditions, pdf maps, and photographs of journal pages
• 6 interactive expedition maps that feature pop-up boxes with journal excerpts that correspond to locations on the maps. These maps are one-of-a-kind, produced in-house from coordinates found in the journals themselves, and only found at ABC-CLIO!
• Timelines for each featured expedition with links to their corresponding journal excerpts
• Essays describing each expedition
• A feature story, “Ocian in View Celebrated,” that serves as our gateway to the collection and includes an Examine activity analyzing primary documents
• Two lesson plans on the support site to accompany the collection in which students analyze primary documents: Concept of Place in the American West and Explorers of the American West and Native American

Click the linked text above to begin exploring these unique and informative resources.

Not a United States Geography subscriber? Sign up for a FREE 30-day trial and don't miss out on these one-of-a-kind interactive resources found only in ABC-CLIO Solutions!

Congratulations to Our VOYA Five-Foot Bookshelf Featured Titles!

The VOYA Five-Foot Bookshelf is an annual collection featuring VOYA reviewers' picks for best books for professionals who serve teens. We are honored to see so many of our Libraries Unlimited titles make the list!

Adult Learners: Professional Development and the School Librarian
Carl A. Harvey II
978-1-61069-039-3

Managing Children's Services in Libraries, Fourth Edition
Adele M. Fasick and Leslie Edmonds Holt
978-1-61069-100-0

Integrating Young Adult Literature through the Common Core Standards
Rachel L. Wadham and Jonathan W. Ostenson
978-1-61069-118-5

Teen Talkback with Interactive Booktalks!
Lucy Schall
978-1-61069-289-2









Rainbow Family Collections: Selecting and Using Children's Books with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Content
Jamie Campbell Naidoo
978-1-59884-960-8

Library Leadership in the United States and Europe: A Comparative Study of Academic and Public Libraries
Peter Hernon and Niels Ole Pors, Editors
978-1-61069-126-0










View the electronic issue of VOYA here. Find the Five-Foot Bookshelf feature on pages 8 and 9.

Zoot Suit Riots

The following interview features Roger Bruns, historian and former deputy executive director of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission at the National Archives in Washington, DC. He is the author of many books, including Encyclopedia of Cesar Chavez: The Farm Workers' Fight for Rights and Justice; Negro Leagues Baseball; and Icons of Latino America: Latino Contributions to American Culture. He has written several biographies for young readers on such figures as Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr.  He is author of the forthcoming Zoot Suit Riots, part of the Landmarks of the America Mosaic series.

You have written a book to be published next spring by ABC-Clio on the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles during World War II.  First of all, what are zoot suits? 

Although the exact origins of the zoot-suit are unclear, many Mexican-American youth in Los Angeles in the early 1940s adopted the so-called “drape” look worn by African-Americans they had seen in pictures and movies, especially in eastern cities, and, most especially, in Harlem. The jazz music and the jitterbug dance craze had made their way to the West Coast along with the clothes that spoke of youthful rebellion and urban identity. There was the oversized coat with broad shoulders and ballooned and pegged pants, large broad-brimmed hat, with a watch chain often dangling down the side. Thick-soled shoes called Calcos added to the look.

Mostly, the youngsters were Mexican-Americans born in the U.S. to parents who had immigrated. Walking around the streets wearing the drapes with friends from their neighborhoods gave them, both young men and women,  a group identity – admiration from some in their own community; disgust and ridicule from others, especially Anglos.  Many young men took on the name “pachucos” and women “pachucas,” terms of uncertain origins that mostly came to mean those in adolescent gangs wearing zoot-suits. Not every pachuco wore a zoot suit, however, and certainly most members of the Mexican-American community did not consider themselves part of the pachuco rage. Indeed, the parents of many of those adolescents involved were unquestionably anxious and concerned about the fidelity of their sons and daughters to this new cultural phenomenon. 

But the zoot-suit rage grew. Pachucos intermixed English and Spanish with slang they called “Chuco,” much of it from a Caló dialect that could be traced to early Spanish wanderers and outcasts. They gathered in groups that carried names of Mexican-American neighborhoods – 39^th Street, White Fence, Alpine Street, and Happy Valley.

What led to riots?

Most of all, we have to remember the entrenched prejudice against Mexican-Americans in this period. It was not only invidious but out in the open for all to see. Many public facilities were closed to Mexican-Americans. Some churches would allow Mexican-Americans inside only on certain days. Many cemeteries, even those publicly operated, reserved special sections specifically for Mexican-Americans, thus separating them in death from Anglos just as they had been during life. Some theaters did allow Mexican-Americans and Afro-Americans access but only on certain nights. There were actually signs that read “No Mexicans or Dogs Allowed.”

Mexican-Americans read stories in Los Angeles newspapers that called them “undesirables.” They were accused by law enforcement officials and political leaders of being inclined to engage in criminal activities and were, therefore, a threat to law and order. When arrested for petty crimes, many were subjected to what was euphemistically called the “third degree” – from beatings with rubber hoses to “three-day hunger tests.”

The Zoot Suit Riots are inextricably linked to the infamous, so-called Sleepy Lagoon murder in August 1941 southeast of Los Angeles.  The Sleepy Lagoon was a reservoir used to irrigate crops and a swimming hole and meeting place for many Mexican-American youths. At a party at a nearby house on August 1, a young man named Jose Diaz was found dead after a brawl among a group of youngsters from the neighborhood around 38^th Street and some youths from other neighborhoods. The Los Angeles Police Department, in a zealous demonstration of combating juvenile delinquency, rounded up in a dragnet more than 600 young people, mainly those who wore zoot suits. Unable to tie any single individual to the crime, a grand jury indicted over 20 youngsters for murder, an unprecedented and outrageous overreach. In the subsequent trial, marked by unbridled bias and judicial misconduct by the judge, most were convicted of first or second degree murder. They would later be released on appeal after serving significant time in jail.

Within months of the convictions, Los Angeleserupted in a riot. On June 3, 1943, with tensions escalating between U.S.sailors stationed in Los Angelesand Mexican-American zoot suiters, some 50 sailors on shore leave ventured into Mexican-American neighborhoods armed with clubs and other weapons. Their mission, supposedly in retaliation for earlier attacks on servicemen, was simple – beat up and rip the clothing from any “zoot suiter” they could find. For several days, sporadic attacks by servicemen against Mexican-Americans threw parts of downtown Los Angelesinto chaos and rioting. For a week, sailors and other servicemen dragged kids off streetcars, from restaurants, and out of movie theaters. The boys were beaten and stripped of their zoot suits, a kind of ritualistic cultural humiliation.

Thousands of white civilians egged on the servicemen. At one point at the end of the week of carnage, an estimated 1000 servicemen rampaged through the Mexican district, storming into bars, penny arcades, theaters, stores, and dance halls with relative impunity. A number of taxi drivers joined the fun, offering free rides to servicemen and civilians to the riot areas. .

Eventually, with news of the riots reaching the national press and with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt referring to the spectacle as race riots against Mexican-Americans, local and military police eventually restored order. Of the many hundreds of  individuals herded off to jail, almost all were Mexican-Americans, the targets of the attackers.  They were mostly charged with disturbing the peace.

In the end, the Los Angeles City Council banned the wearing of zoot suits on Los Angelesstreets.

What was the highlight of your research? In the course of your research, what discovery surprised you the most?

Records at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland, at NARA’s records center in Riverside, California, and at the Franklin Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, had a wealth of original documents about the deep concern of the U.S.government that the trial and riots were damaging the country’s relations with Mexico and Latin Americaduring wartime. In late 1942, the Office of War Information (OWI), an agency designed to coordinate news releases favorable to U.S.interests during the war, worried that open hostility toward Mexican-Americans in Los Angeleswas being exploited by the enemy. Axis propaganda sent to the U.S., Mexico, and other Latin American countries attacked as a sham U.S. claims that it was a democratic nation free of the persecution of minorities. The OWI sent Alan Cranston, a former journalist who would later become a U.S. Senator from California. Cranston met managing editors and publishers of all four of the major newspapers in the city encouraging them to stop slandering Mexican-Americans in their articles. He also encouraged city officials to prepare a plan to help ameliorate the conditions under which Mexican-Americans were struggling in the city.

Also State Department officials had numerous communications and face-to-face meetings with Mexican diplomatic figures trying to temper the anger and suspicions aroused by the Sleepy Lagoon trial and the riots.

What effects did the Sleepy Lagoon trial and the Zoot Suit Riots have on the Mexican-American community and how are these events from 60 years ago relevant today?

So outrageous had been the treatment accorded to Mexican-American citizens in Los Angeles during wartime that activists, reformers, and the immigrant community itself  began to fight back, to make demands, and seek ways to come together to force change against the kind of  systemic prejudice and  dehumanization so evident in the trial and the riots.

In coming years organizers would win a landmark case of Mendez v. Westminster (1947) that would outlaw segregation of Mexican-Americans in public schools. In the same year, reformers founded the Community Services Organization (CSO), a civic-action group dedicated to promote community improvement, awareness of citizenship rights and responsibilities and to fight against human and civil rights abuses. It would fight discrimination in housing, employment, and education; promote political involvement; and establish self-help programs.

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the so-called Chicano Movement produced a new generation of activists and leaders who brought to national attention a variety of issues vital to the Mexican American community and sought to remedy the ills of discrimination and powerlessness through direct political action.  In the early 1960s, Cesar Chavez, a zoot-suiter in his youth, began his historic fight to establish a union of farmworkers. One of his friends and allies, Luis Valdez, who would later be called by many “the Father of Chicano Theater, wrote a play called  Zoot Suit that opened on Broadway in 1978. It related the events of the early 1940s to the continuing struggles of Mexican-Americans and played for the first time in Mexico City in 2010, the same year that the state of Arizona passed draconian legislation against immigration. As the nation continues to grapple with such issues as immigration, fair employment and educational opportunities, and the many aspects of civil rights for Latinos, the story of the Zoot Suits Riots remains a compelling reminder of how far we have come but how daunting remain the challenges.

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month: Encyclopedia of Latino Culture

It is important to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. U.S. Latinos/as today constitutes a dynamic and very diverse population in this country. Their growth in the past few decades has been very rapid to the point where they have already surpassed African Americans as the largest ethnic minority in the United Sates. According to the 2010 U.S. census, there had been a 43 percent increase in the Latino/a population since 2000, from a total of 35 million to over 50 million inhabitants. They are expected to become an increasingly important force culturally, politically, and economically in the next few decades. 

It is very important to understand that U.S. Latinos/as share strong cultural bonds and a common heritage and language, but at the same time they are very diverse in many other respects; their histories are different and they also differ racially and ethnically. For example, many Mexican Americans come from families that have lived in the U.S. Southwest for many generations and many others come from families who have arrived in the United States from Mexico. Many Latinos/as, whose past can be traced to countries such as Mexico, the Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, and the Andean countries of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile, have brought with them a rich Indian and mestizo ancestry. Many Latinos/as from the Caribbean countries of Cuba and the Dominican Republic, the island of Puerto Rico, and Brazil can trace their ancestry as far back the beginning of African slavery in the New World. It would be a mistake to think that U.S. Latinos/as form a monolithic and homogeneous group. In addition to their racial and ethnic differences, they are diverse in other ways including: economic status; political preferences; religious affiliations; education, language proficiency in both English and Spanish; rates of assimilation into U.S. society; ongoing connections to their countries of origin; customs; and cultural practices. It is this last aspect of U.S. Latino/a culture that led to the creation of the Encyclopedia of Latino Culture.

When I was asked by the editors at Greenwood Press to edit this three-volume publication, I did not hesitate. I knew that this would this would afford me a marvelous opportunity to become more knowledgeable about the breadth of U.S. Latino/a culture because most of my published research and teaching had been focused on the literature and popular culture of Mexican Americans. I knew also that in seeking out contributors to write the various entries, I would become better acquainted with experts in many different aspects of U.S. Latino/a culture. These were somewhat selfish reasons for taking on what became a two-year project, but I also believed that such an encyclopedia designed for the general reader and the high school student would be different and more accessible than similar projects. I am now in the final year of my long academic career, and am gratified that bringing this huge project to fruition will, I hope, contribute to an overall better understanding and appreciation of the rich cultural contributions and customs of U.S. Latinos/as.    

Charles M. Tatum, PhD, is the editor of the forthcoming, Encyclopedia of Latino Culture: From Calaveras to Quinceañeras, November 2013, ISBN: 978-1-4408-0098-6

He is Professor of Spanish and Chicano Studies at the University of Arizona. He was for fifteen years dean of College of Humanities. He has written and edited several books on Chicana/o literature and popular culture including Chicano Popular Culture: Que hable el pueblo (2001), Chicano and Chicana Literature: Otra voz del pueblo (2006) and Lowriders in Chicano Culture: From Low to Slow to Show (2001). He the co-founder of the journal, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture. 

Interview with O.C. Edwards Jr., Author of A Nation with the Soul of a Church

Why is the publication of A Nation with the Soul of a Church important at this moment in history—that is, how does it relate to today's news headlines or connect to contemporary questions or issues?

I think the publication of A Nation with the Soul of a Church is important at this time both for its vivid reminder of the strong influence of religion on the public life of the United States and its analysis of some of the ways that influence is exercised for good or evil. Different religious groups are taking opposing stands on so many of the issues before the country today and those stands are often communicated to congregations through the sermons of clergy. At the moment there are few clergy whose names are household words, but thousands of pastors are swaying their congregations at the local level and cumulatively they have a national influence.

What drew you to the topic of A Nation with the Soul of a Church? How does the topic relate to you personally?

I was drawn to the topic of how Christian proclamation had shaped American history by Praeger's commission to write a book on it. After completing my long history of preaching I had not known I wanted to write another book, but when I heard the topic I started salivating. It gave me a motive for relating my interest in the wider topic to life in my own society.

What did you learn in the course of your research; what discovery surprised you the most?

Writing the book certainly refreshed and improved my knowledge of American history in general and taught me a lot about  a number of interesting clergy. I believe Bill Coffin was the only one discussed whom I had ever met personally, but I had heard Billy Graham when he was just becoming well known and, since I live near him,  had even seen him in a local restaurant, although I did not impose myself on him. I suppose the biggest surprise to me was to see how the stories of the individual preachers had connections with one another and together created an impressionistic history of American Christianity.

What challenges did you face in your research or writing?

The biggest challenge to me in writing was in living some distance from a major theological library. I was fortunate in being able to persuade the theological librarian at Sewanee, Jim Dunkly, to both tell me what I ought to read and  provide me with it.

What do you want readers to learn from your book?

 I think I would like secularists to be reminded of what a force religion still is in our society and for Christians to see that not all religious influences are for the good of society. I would also like folks to know how much good really good people can do.

If your book inspired one change in the world, what would you want it to be?

My book concludes with "an extra sermon at no extra charge" in which I warn fellow Americans of the dangers of believing in American exceptionalism. While I believe that our standards are some of the highest ever incorporated in government documents, I am afraid that all to often we have failed to live up to them, partly because too many of us assume we can do no evil. Pride always goes before a fall.

Where might others focus their energies in following on your work in this area?

Because my book covers so much territory, a great deal more could be discovered about each of its subjects and the influence of their preaching in their society.

What are you working on now?

Right now I am revising a mystery novel I wrote in 1980. It is set in a fictitious Episcopal seminary during the Vietnam War and one seminarian who was a Medal of Honor winner in the war is suspected of murdering a fellow student who was a flower child.

O.C. Edwards Jr., PhD, is a retired Episcopal priest. He is a former president and professor emeritus of preaching at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary at Evanston, IL, has cochaired the Faith and Order Commission, and served on the executive committee of the National Council of Churches. His books include A History of Preaching and How Holy Writ Was Written. With John Westerhoff he edited A Faithful Church: Issues in the History of Catechesis.