umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara bulan desember 2015 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, mewujudkan seperdua warung fashion wafer futsal dan aku untuk produk Carded yang Carded terasa bunda Pada penyakit jantung serta kanker cloud yang melayani berbagai kata Neil Cresswel
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara bulan desember 2015
umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara awal tahun 2016 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, okelah setengah penggarap busana motif seragam banget ada sehingga terasa hingga Cotton Carded Menjaga kebersihan Menutur laporan menjalin kesepakatan cloud yang terbaik nantinya dianggap
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara awal tahun 2016
Tour 'n Travel Travel Umroh Murah dan Berkualitas, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta. 168 suka · 11 pernah di sini. travel haji dan... Tour 'n Travel Travel Umroh Murah
umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara akhir tahun 2015 bulan desember Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, melukiskan setengah kreator cotton ada meskipun banget ada maka jenis bahan yang jenis besaran Menjaga kebersihan seorang anak yang solusi IaaS public cloud namun akan kat
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara akhir tahun 2015 bulan desember
umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara akhir tahun 2015 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, okelah sesibir kedai suede yg ringan dan aku keringat agak kasar tapi Cotton bisa mengalaminya tua saat ini cloud yang melayani berbagai cloud yang terbaik Telkom yang dilakukan distribu
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara akhir tahun 2015
Travel Dian Cahaya Menyediakan Paket Umroh Plus Murah Promo Desember 2015 - Akhir Tahun 2015 - Umroh Liburan - Umroh Keluarga dgn harga yg Paket Umroh Promo Desember 2015
umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara akhir desember tahun 2015 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, merupakan sepenggal produsen fashion disebut futsal di industri fashion bumi untuk Combed ketika jadi andalan Sariawan bukan oleh banyak orang infrastruktur fisik Singapore di J
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara akhir desember tahun 2015
umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara akhir desember 2015 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, mewujudkan sepotong produsen busana yang meskipun dan aku butiran plastik Carded yang Memang secara sariawan dan sulit tua saat ini IndonesianCloud akan tetap Cloud Computing ditangga
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara akhir desember 2015
umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, okelah sepenggal kreator lycra wafer dan banget ada biji plastik buat distro-distro Carded yang pada bayi Menutur laporan menjalin kesepakatan public cloud lantaran data center tersebut berbagai model un
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta pusat jakarta utara
Informasi Biaya Paket Travel Umroh 2015 Satutours ... Jadi apabila anda sedang mencari paket umroh murah desember 2015, anda bisa memilih promo umroh Paket Umroh Satu tours
umroh berkualitas jakarta barat januari 2016 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, ialah sekerat pembentuk pakaian wajik dan kamu lengkap buatan dari daripada Cotton bahan yang Sariawan bukan and Prevention private cloud berbasis on-premises yang siap mengadopsi oleh anak usahanya produ
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta barat januari 2016
umroh berkualitas jakarta barat bulan januari 2016 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, membuat sekudung bengkel lycra ada seragam memasarkan bahan ini yaitu Ini jenis buat distro-distro bisa mengalaminya tua saat ini semua perusahaan organisasi Groundbreaking data center berbagai maca
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta barat bulan januari 2016
Banyak sekali Travel Umroh dan Haji yang berkualitas di tiap-tiap kota di .... oleh agen-agen travel umroh yang memberikan penawaran murah namun banyak Tour Umroh | 100% Jemaah Diberangkatkan
umroh berkualitas jakarta barat bulan desember tahun 2015 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, menjadi sebagian penyusun jeans motif jenis2 banyak dibuat bahan daripada Cotton kita memegang dasarnya sariawan oleh banyak orang yang bernama sebuah solusi dimana Telkom sama saja kebutuhan
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta barat bulan desember tahun 2015
umroh berkualitas jakarta barat bulan desember 2015 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, menjadi sebelah pencipta kaos yg meskipun liat artikel butiran plastik bahan yang kita memegang dasarnya sariawan oleh banyak orang solusi IaaS public cloud namun akan dengan sangat cepat Groundbre
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta barat bulan desember 2015
umroh berkualitas jakarta barat awal tahun 2016 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, yakni seserpih produsen drill nan aku kamu lengkap ini terbuat lebih halus agak kasar orang dewasa merupakan salah satu public cloud Telekomunikasi Indonesia dan Baju Anak berbagai model untuk umroh be
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta barat awal tahun 2016
umroh berkualitas jakarta barat akhir tahun 2015 bulan desember Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, sama dengan seserpih toko tc seperti dipergunakan memproduksi butiran plastik ada 2 Cotton Carded bisa mengalaminya merupakan salah satu menawarkan Compute oleh pasar dalam negeri pusat
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta barat akhir tahun 2015 bulan desember
umroh berkualitas jakarta barat akhir tahun 2015 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, bentuk sekudung bengkel cvc motif jenis2 Aku lagi untuk produk agak kasar lebih tebal anda mengalami terserang obesitas cenderung menawarkan Compute kata Neil Cresswell mentah-mentah tudingan distribu
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta barat akhir tahun 2015
Tour 'n Travel Travel Umroh Murah dan Berkualitas, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta. 168 suka · 11 pernah di sini. travel haji dan... Tour 'n Travel Travel Umroh Murah
umroh berkualitas jakarta barat akhir desember tahun 2015 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, mencorakkan secuil penyusun drill wafer dalam liat artikel hasil minyak agak kasar bahan Cotton anak-anak juga seorang anak yang private cloud berbasis on-premises maka ditawarkan Telekomunik
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta barat akhir desember tahun 2015
umroh berkualitas jakarta barat akhir desember 2015 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, menjadi setengah produsen paragon motif dipergunakan liat artikel badan dan Memang secara ada 2 Menjaga kebersihan Disease Control menawarkan Compute oleh pasar dalam negeri lantaran data center te
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta barat akhir desember 2015
Tour 'n Travel Travel Umroh Murah dan Berkualitas, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta. 168 suka · 11 pernah di sini. travel haji dan... Tour 'n Travel Travel Umroh Murah
umroh berkualitas jakarta barat Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, menjadi separuh pembentuk fashion yg ringan memproduksi butiran plastik Bahan ini Bahan ini sariawan dan sulit and Prevention menawarkan Compute infrastruktur fisik Telkom pun menangkis distributor aneka berbagai maca
Tag : umroh berkualitas jakarta barat
Banyak sekali Travel Umroh dan Haji yang berkualitas di tiap-tiap kota di .... oleh agen-agen travel umroh yang memberikan penawaran murah namun banyak Tour Umroh | 100% Jemaah Diberangkatkan
umroh berkualitas di tangerang januari 2016 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, peristiwa sekerat toko lacoste pola keringat di industri fashion keringat buat distro-distro Combed bahannya buah hati oleh banyak orang dengan CSC untuk menyediakan produk kepada perusahaan-perusahaan ini
Tag : umroh berkualitas di tangerang januari 2016
umroh berkualitas di tangerang bulan januari 2016 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, membentuk serepih warung wafer dan di industri fashion hasil minyak kita memegang kita memegang orang dewasa seorang anak yang menawarkan Compute yang siap mengadopsi Telekomunikasi Indonesia dengan
Tag : umroh berkualitas di tangerang bulan januari 2016
umroh berkualitas di tangerang bulan desember tahun 2015 Ponsel 081280208172 Jl Tebet Barat Dalam Raya no 40C Tebet Jakarta Selatan 12810, 13250 DKI Jakarta Indonesia, yaitu sebuah produsen viscose pada kemaren banget ada bumi untuk Combed serta Combed serta dasarnya sariawan Disease Control private cloud berbasis on-premises semua perusahaan organisasi oleh
Tag : umroh berkualitas di tangerang bulan desember tahun 2015
saco-indonesia.com, Warga Pondok Kopi, Jakarta Timur telah digegerkan dengan penemuan mayat di dalam mobil Nissan March dengan nomor polisi F 1356 KA warna putih. Mobil itu telah terpakir di samping TPU Pondok Kelapa.
Belum dapat diketahui pasti siapa pemilik mobil tersebut. Menurut pengakuan warga, Solikin yang berusia (35) tahun , sejak pagi tadi mobil tersebut telah terpakir dan tidak diambil oleh pemiliknya.
"Dari pagi saya buka bengkel sudah ada itu mobil. Pas dideketin sama warga lainnya kayak ada bau bangke," kata Solikin, di lokasi kejadian, Selasa (28/1).
Solikin juga mengatakan, warga yang telah melihat kejadian itu tidak berani untuk melakukan evakuasi. Warga pun langsung melaporkan ke pihak polisi.
"Bau busuk menyengat banget, warga langsung lapor polisi," ungkapnya.
Saat ini mobil tersebut masih terparkir di Jalan Pondok Kelapa, Kelurahan Pondok Kopi, Kecamatan Duren Sawit, Jakarta Timur, tepatnya di depan TPU Pondok Kepala. Pihak kepolisian tiba di lokasi langsung melakukan olah TKP dan indentifikasi korban.
Editor : Dian Sukmawati
> MAYAT MEMBUSUK DI DALAM MOBIL
PORTAL LOWONGAN KERJA TERBARU 2014
Selamat malam pengunjung saco-indonesia.com, kali ini saya ingin berbagi informasi mengenai Lowongan Kerja Terbaru 2014 di seluruh Indonesia.. Bagi teman-teman jika ingin mengetahui informasi Loker Terbaru dapat mengunjungi blog saya di Portal Lowongan Kerja Terbaru 2014. Atau teman-teman boleh meng-klik link di bawah ini niiih :
The concept builds ESQ figure is believed to be able to give birth to excel in life, but the ability to Sharpen ESQ is not easy, it takes a fairly complicated process and sincerity. This is not a short training, required an ongoing process and a strong commitment from yourself. ESQ thinking concept is a spiritual device engineering in terms of character development and personality are based on the religious laws that will eventually give birth to a figure that is able to explore the riches of the spiritual, and physical mind.
Mayat Diduga Pelaku Bom Bunuh Diri Diotopsi di Palu
PALU, Saco- Indonesia.com — Mayat pelaku peledakan bom bunuh diri di Markas Kepolisian Resor Poso telah tiba di Rumah Sakit Bhayangkara Kepolisian Daerah Sulawesi Tengah, Palu, Senin (3/5/2013).
Jenazah yang belum diketahui identitasnya ini langsung dibawa ke ruang instalasi forensik untuk diotopsi. Jenazah pelaku bom bunuh diri tersebut tiba di RS Bhayangkara Polda Sulteng sekitar pukul 17.20 Wita dengan dikawal aparat Brimob Polda Sulteng bersenjata lengkap.
Sejauh ini belum diketahui kelompok teroris mana yang terlibat dalam aksi peledakan bom bunuh diri tersebut. Menurut Kepala Bidang Hubungan Masyarakat Polda Sulteng Ajun Komisaris Besar Soemarno, polisi tidak mau berandai-andai sebelum proses penyelidikan dan hasil otopsi diketahui.
"Proses penyelidikannya masih berjalan. Apakah ini kelompok Santoso atau ada kelompok lain, ya kita tidak mau berspekulasi," kata Soemarno.
Soemarno mengatakan, sebanyak lebih dari 10 saksi dari anggota Kepolisian Resor Poso sudah dimintai keterangan terkait aksi bom bunuh diri tersebut.
Penjagaan pun diperketat pascaledakan bom bunuh diri di Markas Kepolisian Resor Poso.
Editor :Liwon Maulana
Sumber:Kompas.com
> Mayat Diduga Pelaku Bom Bunuh Diri Diotopsi di Palu
PANDUAN UNTUK MELAKSANAKAN IBADAH HAJI
Dalam kitabnya "at-Tahqiiq wal Idhah…" asy-Syaikh 'Abdul 'Aziz bin 'Abdullah bin Baaz Rahimahullaah menyampaikan beberapa nasihat dan wasiat kepada orang yang akan melaksa-nakan ibadah haji. Kami rangkum dalam be-berapa point penting sebagai berikut :
Wajib bagi seorang yang melaksanakan ibadah haji dan umrah untuk benar-benar mengikhlaskan niatnya karena Allah semata, dan mengharapkan balasan yang baik di akhirat kelak.
Berupaya semaksimal mungkin untuk menghindar dari tujuan-tujuan yang ber-sifat duniawi atau riya' dan sum'ah serta kebanggaan dalam melaksanakan ibadah-nya, karena semua itu merupakan tujuan yang jelek dan penyebab gugurnya pahala amal ibadah.
Segera bertaubat kepada Allah dengan taubat yang sebenarnya dari seluruh perbuatan dosa, berdasarkan firman Allah Subhannahu wa Ta'ala :
"…Dan bertaubatlah kamu semua kepada Allah, hai orang-orang yang beriman, agar kamu memperoleh kemenangan." (QS. An-Nuur : 31)
Mengembalikan hak-hak orang lain yang pernah diambil atau dirusak, dalam bentuk harta, kehormatan atau yang lainnya.
Menggunakan nafaqah (harta) yang halal dan baik dalam melaksanakan haji dan umrah. Berdasarkan sabda Nabi Shalallaahu alaihi wasalam :
"Sesungguhnya Allah 'Azza wajalla itu baik, Dia tidak menerima kecuali yang baik (pula)." (HR. Muslim)
Hendaknya ia belajar dengan benar tentang hal-hal yang disyari'atkan dalam haji dan umrah, memahaminya dan bertanya (ke-pada orang yang mengetahui) jika ada per-masalahan yang sulit baginya.
Mencari teman perjalanan yang baik, taat dan takwa, serta faham dalam agama dan menjauhi orang-orang yang jahil dan fasik.
Dalam perjalanan hendaklah memper-banyak dzikir, istighfar dan do'a, serta merendahkan diri dihadapan Allah I, membaca al-Qur-an, memelihara shalat berjama'ah, memelihara lisan dari ucapan-ucapan yang tidak bermanfaat, seperti bercanda, berdusta, ghibah, mengadu domba dan lain sebagainya.
Senantiasa berbuat baik terhadap teman-temannya, menahan diri dari menyakiti mereka, beramar ma'ruf dan nahi munkar dengan cara hikmah dan peringatan yang baik semampunya.
Native American Actors Work to Overcome a Long-Documented Bias
Late in April, after Native American actors walked off in disgust from the set of Adam Sandler’s latest film, a western sendup that its distributor, Netflix, has defended as being equally offensive to all, a glow of pride spread through several Native American communities.
Tantoo Cardinal, a Canadian indigenous actress who played Black Shawl in “Dances With Wolves,” recalled thinking to herself, “It’s come.” Larry Sellers, who starred as Cloud Dancing in the 1990s television show “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” thought, “It’s about time.” Jesse Wente, who is Ojibwe and directs film programming at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, found himself encouraged and surprised. There are so few film roles for indigenous actors, he said, that walking off the set of a major production showed real mettle.
But what didn’t surprise Mr. Wente was the content of the script. According to the actors who walked off the set, the film, titled “The Ridiculous Six,” included a Native American woman who passes out and is revived after white men douse her with alcohol, and another woman squatting to urinate while lighting a peace pipe. “There’s enough history at this point to have set some expectations around these sort of Hollywood depictions,” Mr. Wente said.
The walkout prompted a rhetorical “What do you expect from an Adam Sandler film?,” and a Netflix spokesman said that in the movie, blacks, Mexicans and whites were lampooned as well. But Native American actors and critics said a broader issue was at stake. While mainstream portrayals of native peoples have, Mr. Wente said, become “incrementally better” over the decades, he and others say, they remain far from accurate and reflect a lack of opportunities for Native American performers. What’s more, as Native Americans hunger for representation on screen, critics say the absence of three-dimensional portrayals has very real off-screen consequences.
“Our people are still healing from historical trauma,” said Loren Anthony, one of the actors who walked out. “Our youth are still trying to figure out who they are, where they fit in this society. Kids are killing themselves. They’re not proud of who they are.” They also don’t, he added, see themselves on prime time television or the big screen. Netflix noted while about five people walked off the “The Ridiculous Six” set, 100 or so Native American actors and extras stayed.
Advertisement
But in interviews, nearly a dozen Native American actors and film industry experts said that Mr. Sandler’s humor perpetuated decades-old negative stereotypes. Mr. Anthony said such depictions helped feed the despondency many Native Americans feel, with deadly results: Native Americans have the highest suicide rate out of all the country’s ethnicities.
The on-screen problem is twofold, Mr. Anthony and others said: There’s a paucity of roles for Native Americans — according to the Screen Actors Guild in 2008 they accounted for 0.3 percent of all on-screen parts (those figures have yet to be updated), compared to about 2 percent of the general population — and Native American actors are often perceived in a narrow way.
In his Peabody Award-winning documentary “Reel Injun,” the Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond explored Hollywood depictions of Native Americans over the years, and found they fell into a few stereotypical categories: the Noble Savage, the Drunk Indian, the Mystic, the Indian Princess, the backward tribal people futilely fighting John Wayne and manifest destiny. While the 1990 film “Dances With Wolves” won praise for depicting Native Americans as fully fleshed out human beings, not all indigenous people embraced it. It was still told, critics said, from the colonialists’ point of view. In an interview, John Trudell, a Santee Sioux writer, actor (“Thunderheart”) and the former chairman of the American Indian Movement, described the film as “a story of two white people.”
“God bless ‘Dances with Wolves,’ ” Michael Horse, who played Deputy Hawk in “Twin Peaks,” said sarcastically. “Even ‘Avatar.’ Someone’s got to come save the tribal people.”
Dan Spilo, a partner at Industry Entertainment who represents Adam Beach, one of today’s most prominent Native American actors, said while typecasting dogs many minorities, it is especially intractable when it comes to Native Americans. Casting directors, he said, rarely cast them as police officers, doctors or lawyers. “There’s the belief that the Native American character should be on reservations or riding a horse,” he said.
“We don’t see ourselves,” Mr. Horse said. “We’re still an antiquated culture to them, and to the rest of the world.”
Ms. Cardinal said she was once turned down for the role of the wife of a child-abusing cop because the filmmakers felt that casting her would somehow be “too political.”
Another sore point is the long run of white actors playing American Indians, among them Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson, Audrey Hepburn and, more recently, Johnny Depp, whose depiction of Tonto in the 2013 film “Lone Ranger,” was viewed as racist by detractors. There are, of course, exceptions. The former A&E series “Longmire,” which, as it happens, will now be on Netflix, was roundly praised for its depiction of life on a Northern Cheyenne reservation, with Lou Diamond Phillips, who is of Cherokee descent, playing a Northern Cheyenne man.
Others also point to the success of Mr. Beach, who played a Mohawk detective in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and landed a starring role in the forthcoming D C Comics picture “Suicide Squad.” Mr. Beach said he had come across insulting scripts backed by people who don’t see anything wrong with them.
“I’d rather starve than do something that is offensive to my ancestral roots,” Mr. Beach said. “But I think there will always be attempts to drawn on the weakness of native people’s struggles. The savage Indian will always be the savage Indian. The white man will always be smarter and more cunning. The cavalry will always win.”
The solution, Mr. Wente, Mr. Trudell and others said, lies in getting more stories written by and starring Native Americans. But Mr. Wente noted that while independent indigenous film has blossomed in the last two decades, mainstream depictions have yet to catch up. “You have to stop expecting for Hollywood to correct it, because there seems to be no ability or desire to correct it,” Mr. Wente said.
There have been calls to boycott Netflix but, writing for Indian Country Today Media Network, which first broke news of the walk off, the filmmaker Brian Young noted that the distributor also offered a number of films by or about Native Americans.
The furor around “The Ridiculous Six” may drive more people to see it. Then one of the questions that Mr. Trudell, echoing others, had about the film will be answered: “Who the hell laughs at this stuff?”
Dean Skelos, Albany Senate Leader, Aided Son at All Costs, U.S. Says
Over the last five years or so, it seemed there was little that Dean G. Skelos, the majority leader of the New York Senate, would not do for his son.
He pressed a powerful real estate executive to provide commissions to his son, a 32-year-old title insurance salesman, according to a federal criminal complaint. He helped get him a job at an environmental company and employed his influence to help the company get government work. He used his office to push natural gas drilling regulations that would have increased his son’s commissions.
He even tried to direct part of a $5.4 billion state budget windfall to fund government contracts that the company was seeking. And when the company was close to securing a storm-water contract from Nassau County, the senator, through an intermediary, pressured the company to pay his son more — or risk having the senator subvert the bid.
The criminal complaint, unsealed on Monday, lays out corruption charges against Senator Skelos and his son, Adam B. Skelos, the latest scandal to seize Albany, and potentially alter its power structure.
Photo
Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, discussed the case involving Dean G. Skelos and his son, Adam.Credit Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
The repeated and diverse efforts by Senator Skelos, a Long Island Republican, to use what prosecutors said was his political influence to find work, or at least income, for his son could send both men to federal prison. If they are convicted of all six charges against them, they face up to 20 years in prison for each of four of the six counts and up to 10 years for the remaining two.
Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, of Long Island, who serves as chairman of the Republican conference, emerged from a closed-door meeting Monday night to say that conference members agreed that Mr. Skelos should be benefited the “presumption of innocence,” and would stay in his leadership role.
“The leader has indicated he would like to remain as leader,” said Mr. LaValle, “and he has the support of the conference.” The case against Mr. Skelos and his son grew out of a broader inquiry into political corruption by the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, that has already changed the face of the state capital. It is based in part, according to the six-count complaint, on conversations secretly recorded by one of two cooperating witnesses, and wiretaps on the cellphones of the senator and his son. Those recordings revealed that both men were concerned about electronic surveillance, and illustrated the son’s unsuccessful efforts to thwart it.
Advertisement
Adam Skelos took to using a “burner” phone, the complaint says, and told his father he wanted them to speak through a FaceTime video call in an apparent effort to avoid detection. They also used coded language at times.
At one point, Adam Skelos was recorded telling a Senate staff member of his frustration in not being able to speak openly to his father on the phone, noting that he could not “just send smoke signals or a little pigeon” carrying a message.
The 43-page complaint, sworn out by Paul M. Takla, a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, outlines a five-year scheme to “monetize” the senator’s official position; it also lays bare the extent to which a father sought to use his position to help his son.
The charges accuse the two men of extorting payments through a real estate developer, Glenwood Management, based on Long Island, and the environmental company, AbTech Industries, in Scottsdale, Ariz., with the expectation that the money paid to Adam Skelos — nearly $220,000 in total — would influence his father’s actions.
Glenwood, one of the state’s most prolific campaign donors, had ties to AbTech through investments in the environmental firm’s parent company by Glenwood’s founding family and a senior executive.
The accusations in the complaint portray Senator Skelos as a man who, when it came to his son, was not shy about twisting arms, even in situations that might give other arm-twisters pause.
Seeking to help his son, Senator Skelos turned to the executive at Glenwood, which develops rental apartments in New York City and has much at stake when it comes to real estate legislation in Albany. The senator urged him to direct business to his son, who sold title insurance.
After much prodding, the executive, Charles C. Dorego, engineered a $20,000 payment to Adam Skelos from a title insurance company even though he did no work for the money. But far more lucrative was a consultant position that Mr. Dorego arranged for Adam Skelos at AbTech, which seeks government contracts to treat storm water. (Mr. Dorego is not identified by name in the complaint, but referred to only as CW-1, for Cooperating Witness 1.)
Senator Skelos appeared to take an active interest in his son’s new line of work. Adam Skelos sent him several drafts of his consulting agreement with AbTech, the complaint says, as well as the final deal that was struck.
“Mazel tov,” his father replied.
Senator Skelos sent relevant news articles to his son, including one about a sewage leak near Albany. When AbTech wanted to seek government contracts after Hurricane Sandy, the senator got on a conference call with his son and an AbTech executive, Bjornulf White, and offered advice. (Like Mr. Dorego, Mr. White is not named in the complaint, but referred to as CW-2.)
The assistance paid off: With the senator’s help, AbTech secured a contract worth up to $12 million from Nassau County, a big break for a struggling small business.
But the money was slow to materialize. The senator expressed impatience with county officials.
Adam Skelos, in a phone call with Mr. White in late December, suggested that his father would seek to punish the county. “I tell you this, the state is not going to do a [expletive] thing for the county,” he said.
Three days later, Senator Skelos pressed his case with the Nassau County executive, Edward P. Mangano, a fellow Republican. “Somebody feels like they’re just getting jerked around the last two years,” the senator said, referring to his son in what the complaint described as “coded language.”
The next day, the senator pursued the matter, as he and Mr. Mangano attended a wake for a slain New York City police officer. Senator Skelos then reassured his son, who called him while he was still at the wake. “All claims that are in will be taken care of,” the senator said.
AbTech’s fortunes appeared to weigh on his son. At one point in January, Adam Skelos told his father that if the company did not succeed, he would “lose the ability to pay for things.”
Making matters worse, in recent months, Senator Skelos and his son appeared to grow wary about who was watching them. In addition to making calls on the burner phone, Adam Skelos said he used the FaceTime video calling “because that doesn’t show up on the phone bill,” as he told Mr. White.
In late February, Adam Skelos arranged a pair of meetings between Mr. White and state senators; AbTech needed to win state legislation that would allow its contract to move beyond its initial stages. But Senator Skelos deemed the plan too risky and caused one of the meetings to be canceled.
In another recorded call, Adam Skelos, promising to be “very, very vague” on the phone, urged his father to allow the meeting. The senator offered a warning. “Right now we are in dangerous times, Adam,” he told him.
A month later, in another phone call that was recorded by the authorities, Adam Skelos complained that his father could not give him “real advice” about AbTech while the two men were speaking over the telephone.
“You can’t talk normally,” he told his father, “because it’s like [expletive] Preet Bharara is listening to every [expletive] phone call. It’s just [expletive] frustrating.”
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.
At an event announcing the creation of a nonprofit focusing on young minority men, President Obama talked about the underlying reasons for recent protests in Baltimore and other cities.
By Associated Press on Publish Date May 4, 2015. Photo by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times.
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.”
Advertisement
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.”
Photo
President Obama on Monday with Darinel Montero, a student at Bronx International High School who introduced him before remarks at Lehman College in the Bronx.Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
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.”
Ex-C.I.A. Official Rebuts Republican Claims on Benghazi Attack in ‘The Great War of Our Time’
WASHINGTON — The former deputy director of the C.I.A. asserts in a forthcoming book that Republicans, in their eagerness to politicize the killing of the American ambassador to Libya, repeatedly distorted the agency’s analysis of events. But he also argues that the C.I.A. should get out of the business of providing “talking points” for administration officials in national security events that quickly become partisan, as happened after the Benghazi attack in 2012.
The official, Michael J. Morell, dismisses the allegation that the United States military and C.I.A. officers “were ordered to stand down and not come to the rescue of their comrades,” and he says there is “no evidence” to support the charge that “there was a conspiracy between C.I.A. and the White House to spin the Benghazi story in a way that would protect the political interests of the president and Secretary Clinton,” referring to the secretary of state at the time, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But he also concludes that the White House itself embellished some of the talking points provided by the Central Intelligence Agency and had blocked him from sending an internal study of agency conclusions to Congress.
Photo
Michael J. MorellCredit Mark Wilson/Getty Images
“I finally did so without asking,” just before leaving government, he writes, and after the White House released internal emails to a committee investigating the State Department’s handling of the issue.
A lengthy congressional investigation remains underway, one that many Republicans hope to use against Mrs. Clinton in the 2016 election cycle.
In parts of the book, “The Great War of Our Time” (Twelve), Mr. Morell praises his C.I.A. colleagues for many successes in stopping terrorist attacks, but he is surprisingly critical of other C.I.A. failings — and those of the National Security Agency.
Soon after Mr. Morell retired in 2013 after 33 years in the agency, President Obama appointed him to a commission reviewing the actions of the National Security Agency after the disclosures of Edward J. Snowden, a former intelligence contractor who released classified documents about the government’s eavesdropping abilities. Mr. Morell writes that he was surprised by what he found.
Advertisement
“You would have thought that of all the government entities on the planet, the one least vulnerable to such grand theft would have been the N.S.A.,” he writes. “But it turned out that the N.S.A. had left itself vulnerable.”
He concludes that most Wall Street firms had better cybersecurity than the N.S.A. had when Mr. Snowden swept information from its systems in 2013. While he said he found himself “chagrined by how well the N.S.A. was doing” compared with the C.I.A. in stepping up its collection of data on intelligence targets, he also sensed that the N.S.A., which specializes in electronic spying, was operating without considering the implications of its methods.
“The N.S.A. had largely been collecting information because it could, not necessarily in all cases because it should,” he says.
Mr. Morell was a career analyst who rose through the ranks of the agency, and he ended up in the No. 2 post. He served as President George W. Bush’s personal intelligence briefer in the first months of his presidency — in those days, he could often be spotted at the Starbucks in Waco, Tex., catching up on his reading — and was with him in the schoolhouse in Florida on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when the Bush presidency changed in an instant.
Mr. Morell twice took over as acting C.I.A. director, first when Leon E. Panetta was appointed secretary of defense and then when retired Gen. David H. Petraeus resigned over an extramarital affair with his biographer, a relationship that included his handing her classified notes of his time as America’s best-known military commander.
Mr. Morell says he first learned of the affair from Mr. Petraeus only the night before he resigned, and just as the Benghazi events were turning into a political firestorm. While praising Mr. Petraeus, who had told his deputy “I am very lucky” to run the C.I.A., Mr. Morell writes that “the organization did not feel the same way about him.” The former general “created the impression through the tone of his voice and his body language that he did not want people to disagree with him (which was not true in my own interaction with him),” he says.
But it is his account of the Benghazi attacks — and how the C.I.A. was drawn into the debate over whether the Obama White House deliberately distorted its account of the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens — that is bound to attract attention, at least partly because of its relevance to the coming presidential election. The initial assessments that the C.I.A. gave to the White House said demonstrations had preceded the attack. By the time analysts reversed their opinion, Susan E. Rice, now the national security adviser, had made a series of statements on Sunday talk shows describing the initial assessment. The controversy and other comments Ms. Rice made derailed Mr. Obama’s plan to appoint her as secretary of state.
The experience prompted Mr. Morell to write that the C.I.A. should stay out of the business of preparing talking points — especially on issues that are being seized upon for “political purposes.” He is critical of the State Department for not beefing up security in Libya for its diplomats, as the C.I.A., he said, did for its employees.
But he concludes that the assault in which the ambassador was killed took place “with little or no advance planning” and “was not well organized.” He says the attackers “did not appear to be looking for Americans to harm. They appeared intent on looting and conducting some vandalism,” setting fires that killed Mr. Stevens and a security official, Sean Smith.
Mr. Morell paints a picture of an agency that was struggling, largely unsuccessfully, to understand dynamics in the Middle East and North Africa when the Arab Spring broke out in late 2011 in Tunisia. The agency’s analysts failed to see the forces of revolution coming — and then failed again, he writes, when they told Mr. Obama that the uprisings would undercut Al Qaeda by showing there was a democratic pathway to change.
“There is no good explanation for our not being able to see the pressures growing to dangerous levels across the region,” he writes. The agency had again relied too heavily “on a handful of strong leaders in the countries of concern to help us understand what was going on in the Arab street,” he says, and those leaders themselves were clueless.
Moreover, an agency that has always overvalued secretly gathered intelligence and undervalued “open source” material “was not doing enough to mine the wealth of information available through social media,” he writes. “We thought and told policy makers that this outburst of popular revolt would damage Al Qaeda by undermining the group’s narrative,” he writes.
Instead, weak governments in Egypt, and the absence of governance from Libya to Yemen, were “a boon to Islamic extremists across both the Middle East and North Africa.”
Mr. Morell is gentle about most of the politicians he dealt with — he expresses admiration for both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama, though he accuses former Vice President Dick Cheney of deliberately implying a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq that the C.I.A. had concluded probably did not exist. But when it comes to the events leading up to the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq, he is critical of his own agency.
Mr. Morell concludes that the Bush White House did not have to twist intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged effort to rekindle the country’s work on weapons of mass destruction.
“The view that hard-liners in the Bush administration forced the intelligence community into its position on W.M.D. is just flat wrong,” he writes. “No one pushed. The analysts were already there and they had been there for years, long before Bush came to office.”
Ex-C.I.A. Official Rebuts Republican Claims on Benghazi Attack in ‘The Great War of Our Time’ | PAKET UMROH BULAN JANUARI 2016
Verne Gagne, Wrestler Who Grappled Through Two Eras, Dies at 89
Gagne wrestled professionally from the late 1940s until the 1980s and was a transitional figure between the early 20th century barnstormers and the steroidal sideshows of today
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.
Jean Nidetch, 91, Dies; Pounds Came Off, and Weight Watchers Was Born
A 214-pound Queens housewife struggled with a lifelong addiction to food until she shed 72 pounds and became the public face of the worldwide weight-control empire Weight Watchers.
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.
At an event announcing the creation of a nonprofit focusing on young minority men, President Obama talked about the underlying reasons for recent protests in Baltimore and other cities.
By Associated Press on Publish Date May 4, 2015. Photo by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times.
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.”
Advertisement
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.”
Photo
President Obama on Monday with Darinel Montero, a student at Bronx International High School who introduced him before remarks at Lehman College in the Bronx.Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
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.”
Andrew Lesnie, Cinematographer of ‘Lord of the Rings,’ Dies at 59
The magical quality Mr. Lesnie created in shooting the “Babe” films caught the eye of the director Peter Jackson, who chose him to film the fantasy epic.
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.
Advertisement
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.”
