PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

INDOSAT PILIH 50 PELANGGAN HANGOUT

saco-indonesia.com, Memberikan apresiasi kepada anggota Komunitas FansClub JKT48 sekaligus telah memanfaatkan momen libur akhir tahun, Indosat telah mengajak 50 anggota terbaik untuk hangout seharian bersama personel JKT48.

Ke 50 anggota ini telah mendapat kesempatan untuk makan siang, meet & greet dan berfoto bersama personel JKT48, yang kemudian dilanjutkan dengan Nonton Film terbaru box office dan ditutup dengan Dinner dan Nonton langsung Konser Teater JKT48 di Teater JKT48 FX.

Ke-50 anggota Komunitas FansClub JKT48 ini juga merupakan anggota yang telah terpilih dari 15 ribu member komunitas JKT48 nasional, yang telah diseleksi dengan melihat reload dari masing-masing anggota mulai bulan Juni sampai November 2013 dan mereka adalah anggota dengan reload tertinggi dari seluruh Indonesia.

Program apresiasi ini juga merupakan salah satu komitmen kami bagi para member komunitas JKT48 terbaik dari seluruh Indonesia, sambil memanfaatkan liburan seru bersama IM3, ujar Agus Nurudin, Group Head National Channel Management Indosat, dalam siaran pers.

JKT48 telah dipilih selain karena sebagai Brand Ambassador Indosat IM3 juga telah mempunyai banyak fans yang sangat loyal. Program apresiasi dan retensi semacam ini rutin diberikan Indosat sebagai bentuk penghargaan atas loyalitas para anggota komunitas dalam menggunakan produk Indosat.

Dengan program apresiasi ini diharapkan para anggota komunitas semakin setia dan terus menggunakan produk Indosat serta menjadi word of mouth dalam mempromosikan produk dan layanan Indosat, tambah Agus.

Komunitas JKT48 juga merupakan bagian dari anggota komunitas Sahabat IM3 yaitu komunitas anak muda di sekolah-sekolah yang saat ini sudah berjumlah belasan ribu komunitas sekolah yang tersebar di seluruh Indonesia.

Para siswa yang telah tergabung dalam komunitas Sahabat IM3 ini juga akan menikmati berbagai keuntungan diantaranya tarif telepon dan SMS murah ke sesama teman sekolahnya dalam satu komunitas.

Selain itu indosat juga bekerja sama dengan sekolah untuk dapat mendukung kegiatan belajar mengajar dengan pemberian sarana mengajar ke sekolah seperti akses internet, super WiFi, finger print, mendukung kegiatan sekolah seperti pentas seni serta aktifitas lain yang berguna bagi sekolah.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

JASA CUCI KURSI KANTOR DI JABODETABEK

Jasa Cuci Kursi Kantor di Jabodetabek ~ Kursi kantor juga merupakan salah satu element terpenting dalam sebuah kantor, kenyamanan kerja karyawan juga merupakan suatu hal yang dirasakan sangat perlu untuk diperhatikan oleh seorang pemilik perusahaan atau team pada kantor tersebut. Demi untuk Menjaga kebersihan kantor Anda, maka kami membuka Layanan Jasa Cuci Kursi kantor untuk Wilayah Jabodetabek, Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, dan Bekasi khususnya.

Anda Tidak perlu khawatir akan kesulitan menggunakan Jasa Cuci Kursi Kantor kami, yang perlu anda lakukan hanyalah dengan menelpon ke nomor Jasa Cuci Kursi Kantor yang kami sediakan untuk Anda. Setelah Menghubungi team Cuci Kursi Kantor kami, maka Team Kami akan segera mengunjungi kantor Anda untuk mencuci Kursi kantor yang ingin dibersihkan.memiliki tenaga handal plus dengan Alat Cuci Kursi Kantor terbaik yang ada di Jakarta., Jadi tidak perlu takut untuk memesan jasa cuci kursi kantor kami.

Jasa Cuci Kursi kantor kami menggunakan Alat modern yang menggunakan beberapa kemajuan tingkat teknologi terkini dalam Usaha Laundry Sofa dan Cuci Kursi kantor, Selain itu kami juga menggunakan Deterjen yang terbuat dari Bahan BioTechnology yang dijamin aman dan membunuh bakteri-bakteri menempel pada kursi kantor Anda.

Jasa Cuci Kursi Kantor adalah sebuah service istimewa untuk perusahan anda, kami juga akan memberikan Harga Khusus yang Coorporate untuk anda yang ingin bekerja sama dalam waktu jangka panjang dengan perusahaan kami.Banyak sekali kelebihan Jasa Cuci Kursi kantor yang akan kami berikan untuk Perusahaan Anda, Pemesanan Jasa Cuci Kursi kantor dalam Partai besar akan kami berikan diskon khusus untuk setiap pemesanan.

2014 Ini Adalah Tahun Politik Berbahaya

Saco-Indonesia.com - SITUASI berbahaya dalam kehidupan politik sering mengambil bentuk yang rumit dan halus.

Tidak selalu tentang kekuatan dominan yang mampu menyingkirkan oposisi. Bahaya itu bisa muncul dari keterlibatan masyarakat sipil. Kondisi Indonesia tahun 1960-an dikenal melalui film The Year of Living Dangerously. Di sana, simbol yang dihasilkan kekuatan politik dominan untuk menggalang kekuatan digunakan masyarakat sipil guna meneror masyarakat sipil lainnya. Namun, bahaya politik hampir selalu didorong apa yang terjadi di arena politik negara.

Tahun 2014 adalah the year of politicking dangerously untuk Indonesia yang juga melibatkan masyarakat sipil. Ia akan membuktikan apakah terjadi keadaan yang disebut ilmuwan politik Michael Johnston sebagai warga negara yang terpaksa tak demokra- tis. Kondisi ini lahir pada konteks negara dengan sistem politik formal demokratis, tetapi belum mampu menghadirkan mekanisme akuntabilitas para pejabat publik.  

Warga sipil yang mengambil sikap tak demokratis secara putus asa dan pragmatis memilih wakil rakyat atau pemimpin semata karena orang itu berasal dari daerahnya. Berdasarkan pertimbangan sosial mereka, wakil yang demikian setidaknya akan sedikit  memberikan perhatian atau keuntungan. Pada dasarnya sudah terjadi ketidakpercayaan yang sangat luas pada sistem politik dan para politisi seperti di Indonesia sekarang. Semua partai hampir tak dapat dipercayai. Berdasarkan pandangan seperti itu, rakyat apatis menilai calon dengan berbagai kriteria yang seharusnya secara sehat dikembangkan.

Apatisme warga

Apatisme warga negara merupakan salah satu bentukan sis- tem politik demokratis formal, tetapi tanpa akuntabilitas.  Berbeda dengan pandangan populer, demokrasi secara substansial bukan soal keterwakilan. Demokrasi yang demikian tidak menjamin perbaikan kesejahteraan yang luas. Proses perwakilan penuh problematik.

Bahkan, seandainya partai berusaha mewakili berbagai kepentingan, hal ini bergantung pada kemampuan partai/individu partai dan masyarakat tentang makna keterwakilan. Problemnya bukan menyuarakan kepentingan, melainkan menempatkan kepentingan dalam pertimbangan kepentingan yang beragam.

Bukan waktu yang menentukan kematangan demokrasi, tetapi bagaimana mekanisme membuat proses belajar tidak terdistorsi.  Kemunculan fenomena rakyat yang terpaksa menjadi tak demokratis adalah salah satu akibat dari terjadinya distorsi dalam proses demokratisasi (ke arah yang lebih tinggi).

Demokratisasi secara berbeda di setiap negara memunculkan institusi dan organisasinya sendiri, formal atau informal.  Antara institusi dan organisasi dengan yang muncul belakangan pasti ada berbagai ”jembatan”-nya. Sebagian dari jembatan itu berbahaya bagi demokratisasi.

Pertanyaan dasar bagi penulis tentang demokratisasi adalah apakah praktik yang berlangsung memperkuat atau memperlemah akuntabilitas dari setiap pemain yang menangani sumber daya publik? Jika tidak, akan terjadi penyimpangan sumber daya publik.

Penyimpangan ini dilakukan melalui hubungan dengan wilayah yang sebelumnya dianggap ilegal. Sebagai contoh, hubungan antara penegak hukum dan organisasi kemasyarakatan yang anarkistis, hubungan antara pihak yang memeriksa dan pihak yang diperiksa, hubungan antara peradilan dan broker, pejabat publik dan perusahaan abal-abal, dan sebagainya.

Melalui hubungan-hubungan ini, sumber daya publik keluar dan digunakan tidak semestinya. Lebih berbahaya lagi adalah terjadi penguatan pengorganisasian di antara pihak yang berhubungan secara ilegal atau tidak absah. Nah, apakah mekanisme demokrasi yang ada, yang dijadikan patokan, dapat mengontrol wilayah-wilayah ini.

Proses pemilu, misalnya, sama sekali tidak mampu mengontrol pembalikan wilayah ilegal ini. Hubungan antara lembaga pemerintah dan parlemen   yang  digambarkan seimbang dalam sistem demokrasi  justru memunculkan hubungan konspiratif. Para broker merupakan jembatan medium hubungan ilegal ini.

Kita boleh berdebat tentang apakah di antara calon presiden ada yang berpotensi membawa perbaikan atau tidak. Namun, persoalan dalam pemilu legislatif dapat menjadi batu besar perubahan Indonesia ke arah lebih baik. Sebagai contoh, institusi DPR periode 2009-2014 yang kinerjanya buruk sekali dan sebagian anggotanya terbukti ataupun diduga melakukan pengkhianatan publik,  sekitar 90 persen anggotanya mencalonkan diri kembali.

Jembatan ilegal

Persoalan jembatan ilegal sudah tumbuh begitu banyak dalam sistem demokrasi Indonesia. Demokratisasi adalah proses penguatan negara bersamaan dengan penguatan masyarakat. Pemimpin mendatang, jika ingin melakukan perubahan, harus dapat mengembangkan mekanisme yang menjadi pendorong keterlibatan masyarakat sipil sebagai energi melawan politisi yang ingin mengambil keuntungan diri dan kelompok. Pengetahuan teknokratik tentang hubungan kerja sama institusi negara dan masyarakat sipil sangat dibutuhkan. Penulis berpendapat ini bagian penting menilai para calon.

Akuntabilitas DPR merupakan bagian sangat penting bagi perjalanan bangsa ke depan. Meski penulis sangat skeptis dengan para calon saat ini, siapa tahu ada partai yang membuat langkah besar sebagai komitmen memperbaiki institusi DPR. Penulis, dan (yakin) juga banyak rakyat Indonesia, ingin mendengar konsep mereka lapisan demi lapisan.

Sumber : Kompas.com

Editor : Maulana Lee

TEMPAT WISATA CURUG NANGKA

Curug Nangka adalah sebuah kawasan wisata air terjun yang terletak di Ciapus, Bogor, Jawa Barat yang masuk dalam, naungan RPH Gunung Bunder, BKPH Bogor KPH Kabupaten Bogor.  Daya Tarik Utama Wana Wisata Curug Nangka adalah air terjun yang mempunyai 3 tahap, dengan masing-masing telah memiliki ketinggian antara 10-20 m.  Selain Curug Nangka di kawasan ini juga dapat ditemui dua buah curug lagi, yaitu Curug Kawung dan Curug Daun.  Lokasi ketiga curug ini satu dengan yang lainnya berjarak sekitar 100 m dengan urutannya dari bawah adalah Curug Nangka, lalu Curug Daun dan terakhir adalah Curug Kawung.

Ketiga curug ini berada di kaki Gunung Salak pada ketinggian sekitar 750 m dpl dengan curah hujan 4000mm/tahun dengan suhu udara 20-22 C. Selain telah menyajikan obyek wisata berupa air terjun, di kawasan Curug Nangka banyak sekali dijumpai kera-kera liar yang kerap sekali berani menghampiri pengunjung.

FURNITURE ROTAN

menjual berbagai macam furniture rotan dengan harga yang terjangkau dan kualitas terjamin

Jack Ely, Who Sang the Kingsmen’s ‘Louie Louie’, Dies at 71

A 2-minute-42-second demo recording captured in one take turned out to be a one-hit wonder for Mr. Ely, who was 19 when he sang the garage-band classic.

How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters

Imagine an elite professional services firm with a high-performing, workaholic culture. Everyone is expected to turn on a dime to serve a client, travel at a moment’s notice, and be available pretty much every evening and weekend. It can make for a grueling work life, but at the highest levels of accounting, law, investment banking and consulting firms, it is just the way things are.

Except for one dirty little secret: Some of the people ostensibly turning in those 80- or 90-hour workweeks, particularly men, may just be faking it.

Many of them were, at least, at one elite consulting firm studied by Erin Reid, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. It’s impossible to know if what she learned at that unidentified consulting firm applies across the world of work more broadly. But her research, published in the academic journal Organization Science, offers a way to understand how the professional world differs between men and women, and some of the ways a hard-charging culture that emphasizes long hours above all can make some companies worse off.

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Ms. Reid interviewed more than 100 people in the American offices of a global consulting firm and had access to performance reviews and internal human resources documents. At the firm there was a strong culture around long hours and responding to clients promptly.

“When the client needs me to be somewhere, I just have to be there,” said one of the consultants Ms. Reid interviewed. “And if you can’t be there, it’s probably because you’ve got another client meeting at the same time. You know it’s tough to say I can’t be there because my son had a Cub Scout meeting.”

Some people fully embraced this culture and put in the long hours, and they tended to be top performers. Others openly pushed back against it, insisting upon lighter and more flexible work hours, or less travel; they were punished in their performance reviews.

The third group is most interesting. Some 31 percent of the men and 11 percent of the women whose records Ms. Reid examined managed to achieve the benefits of a more moderate work schedule without explicitly asking for it.

They made an effort to line up clients who were local, reducing the need for travel. When they skipped work to spend time with their children or spouse, they didn’t call attention to it. One team on which several members had small children agreed among themselves to cover for one another so that everyone could have more flexible hours.

A male junior manager described working to have repeat consulting engagements with a company near enough to his home that he could take care of it with day trips. “I try to head out by 5, get home at 5:30, have dinner, play with my daughter,” he said, adding that he generally kept weekend work down to two hours of catching up on email.

Despite the limited hours, he said: “I know what clients are expecting. So I deliver above that.” He received a high performance review and a promotion.

What is fascinating about the firm Ms. Reid studied is that these people, who in her terminology were “passing” as workaholics, received performance reviews that were as strong as their hyper-ambitious colleagues. For people who were good at faking it, there was no real damage done by their lighter workloads.

It calls to mind the episode of “Seinfeld” in which George Costanza leaves his car in the parking lot at Yankee Stadium, where he works, and gets a promotion because his boss sees the car and thinks he is getting to work earlier and staying later than anyone else. (The strategy goes awry for him, and is not recommended for any aspiring partners in a consulting firm.)

A second finding is that women, particularly those with young children, were much more likely to request greater flexibility through more formal means, such as returning from maternity leave with an explicitly reduced schedule. Men who requested a paternity leave seemed to be punished come review time, and so may have felt more need to take time to spend with their families through those unofficial methods.

The result of this is easy to see: Those specifically requesting a lighter workload, who were disproportionately women, suffered in their performance reviews; those who took a lighter workload more discreetly didn’t suffer. The maxim of “ask forgiveness, not permission” seemed to apply.

It would be dangerous to extrapolate too much from a study at one firm, but Ms. Reid said in an interview that since publishing a summary of her research in Harvard Business Review she has heard from people in a variety of industries describing the same dynamic.

High-octane professional service firms are that way for a reason, and no one would doubt that insane hours and lots of travel can be necessary if you’re a lawyer on the verge of a big trial, an accountant right before tax day or an investment banker advising on a huge merger.

But the fact that the consultants who quietly lightened their workload did just as well in their performance reviews as those who were truly working 80 or more hours a week suggests that in normal times, heavy workloads may be more about signaling devotion to a firm than really being more productive. The person working 80 hours isn’t necessarily serving clients any better than the person working 50.

In other words, maybe the real problem isn’t men faking greater devotion to their jobs. Maybe it’s that too many companies reward the wrong things, favoring the illusion of extraordinary effort over actual productivity.

Suzanne Crough, Actress in ‘The Partridge Family,’ Dies at 52

Ms. Crough played the youngest daughter on the hit ’70s sitcom starring David Cassidy and Shirley Jones.

Robert Patterson Jr., Lawyer and Judge Who Fought for the Accused, Dies at 91

Judge Patterson helped to protect the rights of Attica inmates after the prison riot in 1971 and later served on the Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Mike Phillips, Half of Kentucky’s ‘Twin Towers’ of Basketball, Dies at 59

The 6-foot-10 Phillips played alongside the 6-11 Rick Robey on the Wildcats team that won the 1978 N.C.A.A. men’s basketball title.

Top News China’s Intents Are Questioned as It Builds in Antarctica

HOBART, Tasmania — Few places seem out of reach for China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who has traveled from European capitals to obscure Pacific and Caribbean islands in pursuit of his nation’s strategic interests.

So perhaps it was not surprising when he turned up last fall in this city on the edge of the Southern Ocean to put down a long-distance marker in another faraway region, Antarctica, 2,000 miles south of this Australian port.

Standing on the deck of an icebreaker that ferries Chinese scientists from this last stop before the frozen continent, Mr. Xi pledged that China would continue to expand in one of the few places on earth that remain unexploited by humans.

He signed a five-year accord with the Australian government that allows Chinese vessels and, in the future, aircraft to resupply for fuel and food before heading south. That will help secure easier access to a region that is believed to have vast oil and mineral resources; huge quantities of high-protein sea life; and for times of possible future dire need, fresh water contained in icebergs.

It was not until 1985, about seven decades after Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen raced to the South Pole, that a team representing Beijing hoisted the Chinese flag over the nation’s first Antarctic research base, the Great Wall Station on King George Island.

But now China seems determined to catch up. As it has bolstered spending on Antarctic research, and as the early explorers, especially the United States and Australia, confront stagnant budgets, there is growing concern about its intentions.

China’s operations on the continent — it opened its fourth research station last year, chose a site for a fifth, and is investing in a second icebreaker and new ice-capable planes and helicopters — are already the fastest growing of the 52 signatories to the Antarctic Treaty. That gentlemen’s agreement reached in 1959 bans military activity on the continent and aims to preserve it as one of the world’s last wildernesses; a related pact prohibits mining.

But Mr. Xi’s visit was another sign that China is positioning itself to take advantage of the continent’s resource potential when the treaty expires in 2048 — or in the event that it is ripped up before, Chinese and Australian experts say.

“So far, our research is natural-science based, but we know there is more and more concern about resource security,” said Yang Huigen, director general of the Polar Research Institute of China, who accompanied Mr. Xi last November on his visit to Hobart and stood with him on the icebreaker, Xue Long, or Snow Dragon.

With that in mind, the polar institute recently opened a new division devoted to the study of resources, law, geopolitics and governance in Antarctica and the Arctic, Mr. Yang said.

Australia, a strategic ally of the United States that has strong economic relations with China, is watching China’s buildup in the Antarctic with a mix of gratitude — China’s presence offers support for Australia’s Antarctic science program, which is short of cash — and wariness.

“We should have no illusions about the deeper agenda — one that has not even been agreed to by Chinese scientists but is driven by Xi, and most likely his successors,” said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former senior official in the Australian Department of Defense.

“This is part of a broader pattern of a mercantilist approach all around the world,” Mr. Jennings added. “A big driver of Chinese policy is to secure long-term energy supply and food supply.”

That approach was evident last month when a large Chinese agriculture enterprise announced an expansion of its fishing operations around Antarctica to catch more krill — small, protein-rich crustaceans that are abundant in Antarctic waters.

“The Antarctic is a treasure house for all human beings, and China should go there and share,” Liu Shenli, the chairman of the China National Agricultural Development Group, told China Daily, a state-owned newspaper. China would aim to fish up to two million tons of krill a year, he said, a substantial increase from what it currently harvests.

Because sovereignty over Antarctica is unclear, nations have sought to strengthen their claims over the ice-covered land by building research bases and naming geographic features. China’s fifth station will put it within reach of the six American facilities, and ahead of Australia’s three.

Chinese mappers have also given Chinese names to more than 300 sites, compared with the thousands of locations on the continent with English names.

In the unspoken competition for Antarctica’s future, scientific achievement can also translate into influence. Chinese scientists are driving to be the first to drill and recover an ice core containing tiny air bubbles that provide a record of climate change stretching as far back as 1.5 million years. It is an expensive and delicate effort at which others, including the European Union and Australia, have failed.

In a breakthrough a decade ago, European scientists extracted an ice core nearly two miles long that revealed 800,000 years of climate history. But finding an ice core going back further would allow scientists to examine a change in the earth’s climate cycles believed to have occurred 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago.

China is betting it has found the best location to drill, at an area called Dome A, or Dome Argus, the highest point on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Though it is considered one of the coldest places on the planet, with temperatures of 130 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, a Chinese expedition explored the area in 2005 and established a research station in 2009.

“The international community has drilled in lots of places, but no luck so far,” said Xiao Cunde, a member of the first party to reach the site and the deputy director of the Institute for Climate Change at the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences. “We think at Dome A we will have a straight shot at the one-million-year ice core.”

Mr. Xiao said China had already begun drilling and hoped to find what scientists are looking for in four to five years.

To support its Antarctic aspirations, China is building a sophisticated $300 million icebreaker that is expected to be ready in a few years, said Xia Limin, deputy director of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration in Beijing. It has also bought a high-tech fixed-wing aircraft, outfitted in the United States, for taking sensitive scientific soundings from the ice.

China has chosen the site for its fifth research station at Inexpressible Island, named by a group of British explorers who were stranded at the desolate site in 1912 and survived the winter by excavating a small ice cave.

Mr. Xia said the inhospitable spot was ideal because China did not have a presence in that part of Antarctica, and because the rocky site did not have much snow, making it relatively cheap to build there.

Anne-Marie Brady, a professor of political science at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and the author of a soon-to-be-released book, “China as a Polar Great Power,” said Chinese scientists also believed they had a good chance of finding mineral and energy resources near the site.

“China is playing a long game in Antarctica and keeping other states guessing about its true intentions and interests are part of its poker hand,” she said. But she noted that China’s interest in finding minerals was presented “loud and clear to domestic audiences” as the main reason it was investing in Antarctica.

Because commercial drilling is banned, estimates of energy and mineral resources in Antarctica rely on remote sensing data and comparisons with similar geological environments elsewhere, said Millard F. Coffin, executive director of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Hobart.

But the difficulty of extraction in such severe conditions and uncertainty about future commodity prices make it unlikely that China or any country would defy the ban on mining anytime soon.

Tourism, however, is already booming. Travelers from China are still a relatively small contingent in the Antarctic compared with the more than 13,000 Americans who visited in 2013, and as yet there are no licensed Chinese tour operators.

But that is about to change, said Anthony Bergin, deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “I understand very soon there will be Chinese tourists on Chinese vessels with all-Chinese crew in the Antarctic,” he said.

William Sokolin, Wine Seller Who Broke Famed Bottle, Dies at 85

The bottle Mr. Sokolin famously broke was a 1787 Château Margaux, which was said to have belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Sokolin had been hoping to sell it for $519,750.

Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Biographer of Clara Barton and Robert E. Lee, Dies at 64

Ms. Pryor, who served more than two decades in the State Department, was the author of well-regarded biographies of the founder of the American Red Cross and the Confederate commander.

Advertisement Politics Obama Finds a Bolder Voice on Race Issues

As he reflected on the festering wounds deepened by race and grievance that have been on painful display in America’s cities lately, President Obama on Monday found himself thinking about a young man he had just met named Malachi.

A few minutes before, in a closed-door round-table discussion at Lehman College in the Bronx, Mr. Obama had asked a group of black and Hispanic students from disadvantaged backgrounds what could be done to help them reach their goals. Several talked about counseling and guidance programs.

“Malachi, he just talked about — we should talk about love,” Mr. Obama told a crowd afterward, drifting away from his prepared remarks. “Because Malachi and I shared the fact that our dad wasn’t around and that sometimes we wondered why he wasn’t around and what had happened. But really, that’s what this comes down to is: Do we love these kids?”

Many presidents have governed during times of racial tension, but Mr. Obama is the first to see in the mirror a face that looks like those on the other side of history’s ledger. While his first term was consumed with the economy, war and health care, his second keeps coming back to the societal divide that was not bridged by his election. A president who eschewed focusing on race now seems to have found his voice again as he thinks about how to use his remaining time in office and beyond.

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Obama Speaks of a ‘Sense of Unfairness’

In the aftermath of racially charged unrest in places like Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and New York, Mr. Obama came to the Bronx on Monday for the announcement of a new nonprofit organization that is being spun off from his White House initiative called My Brother’s Keeper. Staked by more than $80 million in commitments from corporations and other donors, the new group, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, will in effect provide the nucleus for Mr. Obama’s post-presidency, which will begin in January 2017.

“This will remain a mission for me and for Michelle not just for the rest of my presidency but for the rest of my life,” Mr. Obama said. “And the reason is simple,” he added. Referring to some of the youths he had just met, he said: “We see ourselves in these young men. I grew up without a dad. I grew up lost sometimes and adrift, not having a sense of a clear path. The only difference between me and a lot of other young men in this neighborhood and all across the country is that I grew up in an environment that was a little more forgiving.”

Organizers said the new alliance already had financial pledges from companies like American Express, Deloitte, Discovery Communications and News Corporation. The money will be used to help companies address obstacles facing young black and Hispanic men, provide grants to programs for disadvantaged youths, and help communities aid their populations.

Joe Echevarria, a former chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, will lead the alliance, and among those on its leadership team or advisory group are executives at PepsiCo, News Corporation, Sprint, BET and Prudential Group Insurance; former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey; former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; the music star John Legend; the retired athletes Alonzo Mourning, Jerome Bettis and Shaquille O’Neal; and the mayors of Indianapolis, Sacramento and Philadelphia.

The alliance, while nominally independent of the White House, may face some of the same questions confronting former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins another presidential campaign. Some of those donating to the alliance may have interests in government action, and skeptics may wonder whether they are trying to curry favor with the president by contributing.

“The Obama administration will have no role in deciding how donations are screened and what criteria they’ll set at the alliance for donor policies, because it’s an entirely separate entity,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One en route to New York. But he added, “I’m confident that the members of the board are well aware of the president’s commitment to transparency.”

The alliance was in the works before the disturbances last week after the death of Freddie Gray, the black man who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody in Baltimore, but it reflected the evolution of Mr. Obama’s presidency. For him, in a way, it is coming back to issues that animated him as a young community organizer and politician. It was his own struggle with race and identity, captured in his youthful memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” that stood him apart from other presidential aspirants.

But that was a side of him that he kept largely to himself through the first years of his presidency while he focused on other priorities like turning the economy around, expanding government-subsidized health care and avoiding electoral land mines en route to re-election.

After securing a second term, Mr. Obama appeared more emboldened. Just a month after his 2013 inauguration, he talked passionately about opportunity and race with a group of teenage boys in Chicago, a moment aides point to as perhaps the first time he had spoken about these issues in such a personal, powerful way as president. A few months later, he publicly lamented the death of Trayvon Martin, a black Florida teenager, saying that “could have been me 35 years ago.”

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That case, along with public ruptures of anger over police shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere, have pushed the issue of race and law enforcement onto the public agenda. Aides said they imagined that with his presidency in its final stages, Mr. Obama might be thinking more about what comes next and causes he can advance as a private citizen.

That is not to say that his public discussion of these issues has been universally welcomed. Some conservatives said he had made matters worse by seeming in their view to blame police officers in some of the disputed cases.

“President Obama, when he was elected, could have been a unifying leader,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican candidate for president, said at a forum last week. “He has made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions.”

On the other side of the ideological spectrum, some liberal African-American activists have complained that Mr. Obama has not done enough to help downtrodden communities. While he is speaking out more, these critics argue, he has hardly used the power of the presidency to make the sort of radical change they say is necessary.

The line Mr. Obama has tried to straddle has been a serrated one. He condemns police brutality as he defends most officers as honorable. He condemns “criminals and thugs” who looted in Baltimore while expressing empathy with those trapped in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness.

In the Bronx on Monday, Mr. Obama bemoaned the death of Brian Moore, a plainclothes New York police officer who had died earlier in the day after being shot in the head Saturday on a Queens street. Most police officers are “good and honest and fair and care deeply about their communities,” even as they put their lives on the line, Mr. Obama said.

“Which is why in addressing the issues in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York, the point I made was that if we’re just looking at policing, we’re looking at it too narrowly,” he added. “If we ask the police to simply contain and control problems that we ourselves have been unwilling to invest and solve, that’s not fair to the communities, it’s not fair to the police.”

Moreover, if society writes off some people, he said, “that’s not the kind of country I want to live in; that’s not what America is about.”

His message to young men like Malachi Hernandez, who attends Boston Latin Academy in Massachusetts, is not to give up.

“I want you to know you matter,” he said. “You matter to us.”

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With Iran Talks, a Tangled Path to Ending Syria’s War

UNITED NATIONS — Wearing pinstripes and a pince-nez, Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for Syria, arrived at the Security Council one Tuesday afternoon in February and announced that President Bashar al-Assad had agreed to halt airstrikes over Aleppo. Would the rebels, Mr. de Mistura suggested, agree to halt their shelling?

What he did not announce, but everyone knew by then, was that the Assad government had begun a military offensive to encircle opposition-held enclaves in Aleppo and that fierce fighting was underway. It would take only a few days for rebel leaders, having pushed back Syrian government forces, to outright reject Mr. de Mistura’s proposed freeze in the fighting, dooming the latest diplomatic overture on Syria.

Diplomacy is often about appearing to be doing something until the time is ripe for a deal to be done.

Now, with Mr. Assad’s forces having suffered a string of losses on the battlefield and the United States reaching at least a partial rapprochement with Mr. Assad’s main backer, Iran, Mr. de Mistura is changing course. Starting Monday, he is set to hold a series of closed talks in Geneva with the warring sides and their main supporters. Iran will be among them.

In an interview at United Nations headquarters last week, Mr. de Mistura hinted that the changing circumstances, both military and diplomatic, may have prompted various backers of the war to question how much longer the bloodshed could go on.

“Will that have an impact in accelerating the willingness for a political solution? We need to test it,” he said. “The Geneva consultations may be a good umbrella for testing that. It’s an occasion for asking everyone, including the government, if there is any new way that they are looking at a political solution, as they too claim they want.”

He said he would have a better assessment at the end of June, when he expects to wrap up his consultations. That coincides with the deadline for a final agreement in the Iran nuclear talks.

Whether a nuclear deal with Iran will pave the way for a new opening on peace talks in Syria remains to be seen. Increasingly, though, world leaders are explicitly linking the two, with the European Union’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, suggesting last week that a nuclear agreement could spur Tehran to play “a major but positive role in Syria.”

It could hardly come soon enough. Now in its fifth year, the Syrian war has claimed 220,000 lives, prompted an exodus of more than three million refugees and unleashed jihadist groups across the region. “This conflict is producing a question mark in many — where is it leading and whether this can be sustained,” Mr. de Mistura said.

Part Italian, part Swedish, Mr. de Mistura has worked with the United Nations for more than 40 years, but he is more widely known for his dapper style than for any diplomatic coups. Syria is by far the toughest assignment of his career — indeed, two of the organization’s most seasoned diplomats, Lakhdar Brahimi and Kofi Annan, tried to do the job and gave up — and critics have wondered aloud whether Mr. de Mistura is up to the task.

He served as a United Nations envoy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and before that in Lebanon, where a former minister recalled, with some scorn, that he spent many hours sunbathing at a private club in the hills above Beirut. Those who know him say he has a taste for fine suits and can sometimes speak too soon and too much, just as they point to his diplomatic missteps and hyperbole.

They cite, for instance, a news conference in October, when he raised the specter of Srebrenica, where thousands of Muslims were massacred in 1995 during the Balkans war, in warning that the Syrian border town of Kobani could fall to the Islamic State. In February, he was photographed at a party in Damascus, the Syrian capital, celebrating the anniversary of the Iranian revolution just as Syrian forces, aided by Iran, were pummeling rebel-held suburbs of Damascus; critics seized on that as evidence of his coziness with the government.

Mouin Rabbani, who served briefly as the head of Mr. de Mistura’s political affairs unit and has since emerged as one of his most outspoken critics, said Mr. de Mistura did not have the background necessary for the job. “This isn’t someone well known for his political vision or political imagination, and his closest confidants lack the requisite knowledge and experience,” Mr. Rabbani said.

As a deputy foreign minister in the Italian government, Mr. de Mistura was tasked in 2012 with freeing two Italian marines detained in India for shooting at Indian fishermen. He made 19 trips to India, to little effect. One marine was allowed to return to Italy for medical reasons; the other remains in India.

He said he initially turned down the Syria job when the United Nations secretary general approached him last August, only to change his mind the next day, after a sleepless, guilt-ridden night.

Mr. de Mistura compared his role in Syria to that of a doctor faced with a terminally ill patient. His goal in brokering a freeze in the fighting, he said, was to alleviate suffering. He settled on Aleppo as the location for its “fame,” he said, a decision that some questioned, considering that Aleppo was far trickier than the many other lesser-known towns where activists had negotiated temporary local cease-fires.

“Everybody, at least in Europe, are very familiar with the value of Aleppo,” Mr. de Mistura said. “So I was using that as an icebreaker.”

The cease-fire negotiations, to which he had devoted six months, fell apart quickly because of the government’s military offensive in Aleppo the very day of his announcement at the Security Council. Privately, United Nations diplomats said Mr. de Mistura had been manipulated. To this, Mr. de Mistura said only that he was “disappointed and concerned.”

Tarek Fares, a former rebel fighter, said after a recent visit to Aleppo that no Syrian would admit publicly to supporting Mr. de Mistura’s cease-fire proposal. “If anyone said they went to a de Mistura meeting in Gaziantep, they would be arrested,” is how he put it, referring to the Turkish city where negotiations between the two sides were held.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon remains staunchly behind Mr. de Mistura’s efforts. His defenders point out that he is at the center of one of the world’s toughest diplomatic problems, charged with mediating a conflict in which two of the world’s most powerful nations — Russia, which supports Mr. Assad, and the United States, which has called for his ouster — remain deadlocked.

R. Nicholas Burns, a former State Department official who now teaches at Harvard, credited Mr. de Mistura for trying to negotiate a cease-fire even when the chances of success were exceedingly small — and the chances of a political deal even smaller. For his efforts to work, Professor Burns argued, the world powers will first have to come to an agreement of their own.

“He needs the help of outside powers,” he said. “It starts with backers of Assad. That’s Russia and Iran. De Mistura is there, waiting.”

Take the Money and Run

The career criminals in genre novels don’t have money problems. If they need some, they just go out and steal it. But such financial transactions can backfire, which is what happened back in 2004 when the Texas gang in Michael