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saco-indonesia.com, Anggun C Sasmi merupakan penyanyi wanita Indonesia yang namanya juga sudah dikenal hingga mancanegara. Makanya banyak musisi yang ingin mencoba mengikuti jejaknya dalam hal bermusik, salah satunya Larra Sylvi.
"Menjadi penyanyi Internasional seperti Anggun adalah impianku," ujar Larra saat ditemui di FX Mal, Sudirman, Jakarta Pusat.
Makanya lewat single Kamu, dara kelahiran 16 Maret 1995 itu telah berharap akan bisa merealisasikan keinginannya untuk bisa membanggakan Indonesia dan tentu keluarga untuk dapat memulai go Internasional seperti Anggun.
"Semoga lewat single ini, aku juga bisa mengepakan sayap ku di industri musik Tanah Air. Dan juga dapat diterima oleh para pencinta musik," kata Larra.
Tentunya tidak mudah bagi Larra untuk menjadi seperti penyanyi idolanya. Maka itu dia juga mengaku butuh kritikan dari para penikmat musik tanah air agar bisa menjadikannya lebih matang.
"Terima (kritikan) banget. Malah aku suka minta dikritik. Ayo dong apa yang kurang. Kritikan itu sebenarnya sifatnya membangun, makanya aku ambil positifnya saja. Biar mental kuat juga," pungkasnya.
Editor : Dian Sukmawati
saco-indonesia.com, Sulley Muntari telah menyebut pelatih Diego Simeone sebagai sosok yang sangat cerdas dan akan bisa membawa timnya menuju arah yang lebih baik di musim ini. Hal tersebut telah diungkapkan oleh pemain AC Milan itu dalam menanggapi hasil drawing babak 16 besar Liga champions yang telah mempertemukan Il Rossoneri dengan Atletico Madrid.
"Atletico Madrid adalah tim yang amat sulit untuk dapat dihadapi. Di beberapa tahun terakhir, mereka telah melakukan tugasnya dengan baik. Pelatih mereka telah memiliki banyak ide hebat dan tim benar-benar telah merefleksikan apa yang dipikirkan oleh Simeone. Ia adalah pelatih yang cerdas dan mampu untuk mempengaruhi mental para pemainnya," tutur Muntari menurut laporan situs resmi Milan.
"Mereka sejauh ini tampil cukup baik di Spanyol dan Eropa. Ini akan sulit namun pada bulan Februari mendatang kami juga akan melakukan persiapan sebaik mungkin untuk kedua laga tersebut," tutupnya.
Muntari dalam satu wawancara sebelum drawing pernah menyebut Atleti sebagai tim terlemah yang bisa mereka hadapi, oleh karena itu ia juga berharap Milan bertemu dengan tim yang diperkuat oleh David Villa dan Diego Costa tersebut.
Editor : Dian Sukmawati
Masyarakat kiwari merasa sangat pesimis dengan janji-janji Partai Politik, masarakat cenderung akan memilih Figur yang dekan dengan rakyat. Sifat apatis rakyat kepada Partai yang ada sekarang ini akan membahayakan Partai-partai politik yang ada sekarang ini, karena tidak ada pembelajaran yang dapat diterima oleh rakyat dari partai-partai tersebut.
Editor:Liwon Maulana
Sumber: Pro3 RRI
PARTAI POLITIK
Sektor properti perumahan terus tumbuh, PT Betonjaya Manunggal Tbk (BTON) menggenjot kapasitas produksi dengan menambah satu line mesin produksi besi beton berkapasitas 15.000 ton per tahun yang akan beroperasi Agustus mendatang.
Director PT Bentonjaya Manunggal Tbk Andy Soesanto juga mengatakan, penyerapan besi beton selama ini 90 persen ke sektor properti perumahan.
"Produk kami berupa kolom besi beton berdiameter 6-12 mm, jadi lebih banyak dipakai untuk perumahan, bukan konstruksi besar," katanya, di sela Rapat Umum Pemegang Saham (RUPS) di Shangri-La Hotel, Selasa (26/6/2012).
Utilitas mesin perseroan saat ini baru 60-80 persen dari kapasitas terpasang 45.000 ton per tahun. "Pembelian mesin tersebut juga menggunakan alokasi belanja modal tahun ini yang besarnya Rp 8,8 miliar, dengan rincian untuk investasi tanah Rp 2 miliar, bangunan Rp 2 miliar, mesin dan electricity Rp 4,8 miliar," imbuh Andy.
Perseroan merealisasikan penjualan sepanjang 2011 sebesar Rp 153,56 miliar, tahun ini diproyeksikan tumbuh 15-20 persen menjadi Rp 175-180 miliar dengan target laba bersih Rp 25 miliar.
Sampai dengan Mei, penjualan yang berhasil dibukukan perseroan sebesar Rp 71,6 miliar (11.045 ton) dengan capaian laba bersih Rp 12,4 miliar. "Kami optimistis penjualan naik karena kami fokus ke pasar domestik, dimana fluktuasi harga kolom besi beton tidak seperti di pasar global," yakinnya.
Harga jual besi beton misalnya, per Mei kemarin Rp 6.741 per kg, Mei 2011 Rp 6.037 per kg. Harga jual waste plate Mei ini Rp 5.570 per kg, Mei tahun lalu Rp 4.727 per kg, harga scrap Rp 4.946 per kg sudah naik dari Mei tahun lalu Rp 4.587 per kg. "Selain karena harga jualnya naik, volume produksinya secara kuantitas juga naik," kata Andy.
Tahun ini, perseroan juga membagikan dividen sebesar Rp 20 per lembar saham dengan total Rp 3,6 miliar (19 persen dari laba bersih perseroan tahun 2011).
HARGA BESI BETON TERTOLONG SEKTOR PROPERTI
Makin banyaknya orang bertransaksi secara online saat ini mulai membuat paradigma baru dalam kehidupan masyarakat. Orang-orang akan semakin mudah berbelanja walaupun penjual dan pembeli tidak saling bertemu secara fisik, tempat merekapun sangat berjauhan. Itulah sebabnya jasa kirim barang semakin di butuhkan terutama oleh para pelaku bisnis ini.
Peluang bisnis dan prospek jasa kirim barang masih sangat bagus dan terus berkembang. Tentu saja bukan hanya orang yang berbisnis online target utama kita, masyarakat umum hingga perusahaan besar sangat membutuhkan bisnis jasa kirim barang ini. Walau begitu, diperlukan riset yang mendalam guna memulai usaha jasa kirim barang.
Ada beberapa hal yang mesti anda lakukan sebelum memulai usaha jasa kirim barang, riset ini juga akan menentukan jenis usaha jasa kirim barang dan jangkauannya.
1. Tentukan daerah operasional dan alat transportasi usaha jasa kirim barang anda.
Bila lokasi usaha anda berada di pusat bisnis kota yang ramai dengan banyak perusahaan, bank, pusat perbelanjaan dan kantor lainnya. Anda juga dapat memilih sepeda motor sebagai sarana transfortasi utama, ruang lingkup daerah operasi anda mungkin akan lebih kecil karena keterbatasan sepeda motor yang tidak dapat mengantar dengan jarak yang jauh dan paket ukuran besar. Namun sepeda motor juga dapat mempercepat pengantaran paket yang dikirim karena pusat bisnis kota adalah daerah macet, memilih sepeda motor sebagai alat transportasi adalah yang terbaik bagi usaha baru.
Bila lokasi usaha anda jauh dari pusat bisnis kota, atau bagi anda yang sudah menguasai pusat bisnis kota. Pilihan menggunakan mobil adalah keharusan, hal ini karena jarak tempuh mobil lebih luas dan paket yang di antar dapat lebih banyak dan ukuran paket yang lebih besar. Semakin luas jangkauan operasi tentu juga akan semakin banyak keuntungan yang di dapat.
2. Tentukan jenis paket layanan yang akan anda antar
Bila lokasi usaha jasa kirim barang anda berada di pusat bisnis kota, anda juga dapat menangani pengiriman surat menyurat, dokumen penting dan paket-paket kecil di dalam kawasan pusat bisnis kota saja. Transfortasi utama yang anda butuhkan adalah sepeda motor. Kuasai dahulu pasar ini sebelum anda memutuskan melebarkan wilayah operasi.
Bila lokasi usaha jasa kiriman barang anda terletak di pinggiran kota, anda juga dapat mengambil semua jenis paket anataran. Mulai dari surat menyurat, dokumen rahasia, paket kecil sampai kargo ukuran besar. Anda juga dapat beroperasi di semua wilayah, tentu dengan dukungan alat transfortasi mobil yang harus anda miliki. Hal ini juga berlaku bagi anda yang sudah menguasai pasar pusat bisnis kota dan ingin melebarkan pelayanan usaha anda.
3. Tentukan tarif layanan yang anda antar
Anda juga harus menentukan besaran tarif yang pas bagi layanan jasa kirim barang anda. Tentunya tarif untuk dapat mengantar surat dengan dokumen rahasia adalah berbeda walaupun ukuran mungkin saja sama, begitu juga paket. Anda juga harus membuat tarif berdasarkan jenis, berat, ukuran dan jarak tempuh antaran paket tersebut.
Anda juga harus menentukan jam operasional, batas kirim barang, biaya tambahan dan layanan lainnya yang ditawarkan. Anda juga harus menentukan jam berapa batas kirim barang yang langsung diantar hari ini atau termasuk antaran esok hari. Ketahui juga tarif dari kompetitor anda diwilayah usaha anda.
4. Promosikan bisnis jasa pengiriman barang anda
Promosi untuk peluang usaha jasa kirim barang adalah suatu keharusan. Buatlah kartu nama dan brosur atau leaflet usaha anda. Bagikan ke kantor kantor di pusat bisnis kota, tempat keramaian atau toko toko di pasar, mal dan disekitar tempat usaha anda. Buat papan nama didepan lokasi usaha, memasang iklan di korandan yelow page.
Anda juga dapat membuat sebuah Website perusahaan yang profesional guna untuk membantu usaha anda secara online. Pastikan website berisi konten berupa daftar tarif, wilayah operasional, waktu pengiriman dan kalau memungkinkan ada traking barang yang sedang diantar.
5. Urus izin usaha agar bisnis anda menjadi resmi
Izin usaha bagi peluang usaha jasa kirim barang merupakan sebuah keharusan juga, hal ini jugs akan dapat meningkatkan kepercayaan dan kredibilitas usaha anda dimata pelanggan. Pelanggan memerlukan kepastian bahwa barang mereka akan sampai sesuai dengan layanan. Anda dapat mengurus Surat izin gangguan, surat izin usaha perdagangan dan perizinan lain yang dibutuhkan di kantor Dinas Perindustrian dan Perdagangan di Daerah Tingkat II atau setingkat dengan Kabupaten atau Kotamadya setempat. Bagi Kabupaten atau kota yang sudah di lengkapi unit pelayanan terpadu bisa mendapatkannya di sana berikut dengan perizinan lainnya.
6. Kerjasama dengan perusahaan jasa kirim barang lain
Adakalanya barang yang hendak anda kirim ternyata telah memiliki tujuan yang jauh, diluar jangkauan dan belum terdapat kantor atau pelayanan ke daerah tersebut. Tentu anda tidak ingin begitu saja menolaknya karena ini adalah peluang bagi anda, apalagi bila itu pelanggan setia anda. Saat ini banyak yang mengajak kerjasama dibidang jasa pengantaran, anda dapat mengambil salah satunya guna melebarkan sayap. Anda juga dapat berkerjasama dengan perusahaan jasa kirim barang terkemuka seperti FedEx, Tiki atau JNE atau Pos Indonesia. Biasanya mereka akan memberikan diskon khusus bagi anda, barang yang anda kirimpun lebih terjamin.
7. Cari pelanggan tetap
Carilah pelanggan tetap, berikan tarif khusus bagi mereka. Anda juga dapat mendatangi kantor kantor atau restauran guna untuk mengurus pengiriman atau delivery barang mereka. Anda juga dapat menempatkan karyawan di tempat pelanggan tetap anda
Selain beberapa hal di atas, anda juga harus memperhatikan kesiapan usaha anda. Perhatikan kualitas pelayanan usaha, kecepatan dan ketepatan pengiriman, dan tentu saja karyawan anda. Pilih karyawan yang mempunyai keinginan untuk membantu. Dalam bidang jasa, kepuasan pelanggan adalah prioritas utama.
PELUANG USAHA JASA PENGIRIMAN BARANG
Mr. Goldberg was a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist who was married to Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook.
Dave Goldberg, Head of Web Survey Company and Half of a Silicon Valley Power Couple, Dies at 47As governor, Mr. Walker alienated Republicans and his fellow Democrats, particularly the Democratic powerhouse Richard J. Daley, the mayor of Chicago.
Dan Walker, 92, Dies; Illinois Governor and Later a U.S. PrisonerUNITED 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.”
With Iran Talks, a Tangled Path to Ending Syria’s WarMr. King sang for the Drifters and found success as a solo performer with hits like “Spanish Harlem.”
Ben E. King, Soulful Singer of ‘Stand by Me,’ Dies at 76Ms. Plisetskaya, renowned for her fluidity of movement, expressive acting and willful personality, danced on the Bolshoi stage well into her 60s, but her life was shadowed by Stalinism.
Maya Plisetskaya, Ballerina Who Embodied Bolshoi, Dies at 89Ms. Crough played the youngest daughter on the hit ’70s sitcom starring David Cassidy and Shirley Jones.
Suzanne Crough, Actress in ‘The Partridge Family,’ Dies at 52WASHINGTON — During a training course on defending against knife attacks, a young Salt Lake City police officer asked a question: “How close can somebody get to me before I’m justified in using deadly force?”
Dennis Tueller, the instructor in that class more than three decades ago, decided to find out. In the fall of 1982, he performed a rudimentary series of tests and concluded that an armed attacker who bolted toward an officer could clear 21 feet in the time it took most officers to draw, aim and fire their weapon.
The next spring, Mr. Tueller published his findings in SWAT magazine and transformed police training in the United States. The “21-foot rule” became dogma. It has been taught in police academies around the country, accepted by courts and cited by officers to justify countless shootings, including recent episodes involving a homeless woodcarver in Seattle and a schizophrenic woman in San Francisco.
Now, amid the largest national debate over policing since the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, a small but vocal set of law enforcement officials are calling for a rethinking of the 21-foot rule and other axioms that have emphasized how to use force, not how to avoid it. Several big-city police departments are already re-examining when officers should chase people or draw their guns and when they should back away, wait or try to defuse the situation
Police Rethink Long Tradition on Using ForceMs. von Furstenberg made her debut in the movies and on the Broadway stage in the early 1950s as a teenager and later reinvented herself as a television actress, writer and philanthropist.
Betsy von Furstenberg, Baroness and Versatile Actress, Dies at 83A 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.
Jean Nidetch, 91, Dies; Pounds Came Off, and Weight Watchers Was BornWASHINGTON — 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.
“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.
“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.
The book is to be released next week.
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’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.
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.”
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.”
Obama Finds a Bolder Voice on Race IssuesFullmer, who reigned when fight clubs abounded and Friday night fights were a television staple, was known for his title bouts with Sugar Ray Robinson and Carmen Basilio.
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