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And:
I do not understand a public policy that allows hot heads to destroy in the hope cooler heads will ultimately prevail. But then I thought the '60's was a dangerous time and established unacceptable norms. So what do I know.
Twin Cities Cops Stand and Watch as Buildings Burn
Local business owners say they are willing to use force if necessary to keep their shops from being looted.
By Kyle Hooten
Minneapolis
Hennepin County prosecutors on Friday charged former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd, 46. The white Mr. Chauvin was recorded Monday kneeling on the African-American Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as he and three other officers tried to arrest him on suspicion of passing a counterfeit $20 bill. Floyd, who was struggling to breathe, repeatedly asked the officers to help him stand up and died after being taken into custody.
Each night since, the Twin Cities have burned. This isn’t the first time Minneapolis has experienced civil unrest with racial overtones. In the summer of 1967, young residents of North Minneapolis threw rocks, smashed windows and set fires to shops along Plymouth Avenue in protest against unjust conditions in the city’s black neighborhoods. Mayor Arthur Naftalin urged the police to show restraint, and the situation eased.
Minneapolis police have similarly taken a hands-off approach to this week’s rioting, which has destroyed roughly 130 local businesses, but the anger shows no sign of letting up. Downtown business owners—even those who stand against police brutality—have been fighting off looters with their bare hands. Some have taken up arms in defense of their establishments.
Early Friday morning, as fires raged along the Lake Street corridor, the African-American owners of GM Tobacco told me they were armed and ready to protect their business—and that they stand in solidarity with those who seek justice for Floyd.
“This our home, this is where we live, this is where we shop,” one the men in front of the tobacco store said. “Our problem is they could have took it to the Capitol, could have took it to different places, but they took it here.” From the sidewalk in front of the tobacco shop I could see Minneapolis’s Third Police Precinct, which rioters set on fire.
“Why are you attacking small businesses and family owned businesses?” one of the men in front of the tobacco store said. “Why are you doing that if you have a problem with the police? We feel the same way that you feel.”
While the owners of the tobacco store avoided violent confrontation that night, the same couldn’t be said for the owner of Cadillac Pawn, who allegedly shot and killed Calvin Horton as he and others tried to loot his East Lake Street jewelry store. Hennepin County Jail records show that the 59-year-old owner was arrested.
Small-business owners aren’t the only ones packing heat. Minutes after I spoke with the tobacconists, I heard gunshots. As flames poured out of the Third Precinct, live streams showed several people brandishing firearms. One rioter suggested that he had recently acquired the gun he was holding, which looked to be a SIG Sauer P226—a law-enforcement and military favorite.
Dozens of shots could be heard Thursday night and into the early hours of Friday. Most bullets were presumably fired into the air, but the Star Tribune reported at least one gunshot victim had sought medical help overnight Thursday. “A gentleman pulled out a gun and started shooting in this direction,” the paper quoted a St. Paul resident as saying. “It’s just been crazy out here.”
Although Gov. Tim Walz has deployed some 500 members of the state’s National Guard to patrol Twin Cities streets, the police haven’t done much to protect businesses or bystanders. As the Third Precinct was under attack, a convoy of police vehicles was caught on video driving away. Early Thursday, I watched three looters carrying armfuls of goods jump into a getaway car. Dozens of police officers who were blocking access to an adjacent street stood by and let them go.
A Jewish Dynasty in a Changing China
For more than a century, the fortunes of the powerful Kadoorie family have been a barometer of Chinese openness to the world
By Jonathan Kaufman
Since 1880, when an Iraqi Jewish refugee named Elly Kadoorie arrived in Hong Kong, China has gone through a series of revolutions—from domination by Western powers to independence, from Nationalist to Communist rule, from colonialism to capitalism to communism. Through it all, the Kadoorie family have been a barometer of the country’s openness to the world, rising to become the richest Western family in China. Leaders have been seeking their advice for generations, drawn by their combination of business skills and political acumen. Now, as China cracks down on dissent in Hong Kong and defiant protesters again take to the streets, the problem facing the family—like other companies and governments seeking to deal with a more repressive and nationalistic regime—is whether China will continue to welcome them.
The Kadoories built their first fortune in Shanghai between the world wars, when the city became a global crossroads. When the communists took over in 1949 and expelled foreigners, they lost almost everything, fleeing to British-ruled Hong Kong to make a new start. Over the next 25 years they grew richer than ever, amassing an $18 billion portfolio that includes China Light and Power, which provides electricity to 80% of Hong Kong’s residents, and the luxury Peninsula hotel chain.
When the People’s Republic began to open up in 1972, after President Nixon’s visit, one of the first calls the communist leadership made was to the Kadoories, seeking their help in building a nuclear power plant. The Kadoories, who remain British citizens, became one of the country’s biggest foreign investors, returning to Shanghai triumphantly to build a new Peninsula Hotel. Today they meet regularly with top Chinese leaders, including Xi Jinping.
During World War II, the elderly Elly Kadoorie was imprisoned in a Japanese camp, and he died in captivity in 1944. Soon after the war ended, the Chinese communists swept through Shanghai, seizing the family’s buildings and art collection. Most Westerners in China, including the Sassoons, fled to Europe, Australia or the Americas. But Elly’s grown sons, Lawrence and Horace, stayed close by, moving to the family’s hotel in Hong Kong. “If we sit down and worry, not only will no progress be made but everything will get worse,” Lawrence wrote to Horace in 1946. “If we go ahead optimistically, and in the belief that Hong Kong has a great future before it…we shall recover our losses and progress.” Hong Kong, Lawrence declared, “may become another Shanghai.”
He turned out to be spectacularly correct. Over the next 70 years, through the Cold War and China’s economic rise, the Kadoories rebuilt their fortune in Hong Kong. They also concluded that businessmen of their father’s generation, isolated and wealthy, had been blind to the rise of communism and paid a terrible price. “The best protection against Communism is to provide living conditions that are better than those in China proper,” Lawrence declared. The Kadoories poured millions into helping displaced Chinese farmers and refugees set up small farms in Hong Kong. Research supported by the Kadoories led to the breeding of a new strain of pig that provided more meat for the city’s booming population. The Jewish Kadoories, the Chinese farmers joked, “know everything about the pig except the way it tastes.”
At the same time, the Kadoories were convinced that one day China would open up again. They maintained covert ties with the mainland and never publicly criticized the communist regime. The strategy paid off in 1978, when the Kadoories were welcomed back by Deng Xiaoping and invested a billion dollars in China’s first nuclear plant. Later they helped to keep Hong Kong calm as the British negotiated its handover to China, which took place in 1997. “You have always been a friend to China,” an aide to Xi Jinping told Michael Kadoorie, grandson of Elly and the current head of the family.
Michael Kadoorie still believes that Hong Kong’s business community must work with China. Last summer, as the city was racked by increasingly violent anti-China demonstrations, he wrote a full-page advertisement that ran in local English and Chinese newspapers. “It is disheartening to see what has overtaken the city recently,” he wrote. “I do not support violence nor do I believe this should be the way to resolve conflicts.” Instead, he pleaded, China must “find solutions in mutual respect, understanding and open dialogue.”
It’s a familiar dilemma for the Kadoories. Whenever China has been open and engaged with the world—in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s, in Hong Kong under British rule, and in mainland China after 1978—the family has prospered. Their success is a testament to China’s ability to absorb foreign influences and benefit from foreign investment. But as the country turns more assertive and nationalistic, the tightrope the Kadoories walk is growing thinner.
Mr. Kaufman is director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern University. This essay is adapted from his new book, “The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China,” which will be published by Viking on June 2.
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More from Salena:
Bristol is like Elvis, so identifiable that it only goes by one name, and tickets are so revered they are often included in divorce settlements and family estate settlements.
My latest from Bristol Tennessee: By Salena Zito
Click here for the full story.My latest from Bristol Tennessee: By Salena Zito
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If these are factual does it justify what happened?
If these are factual does it justify what happened?
BTW....wait until you read the REAL story of the "innocent man".....methinks, not so innocent. In prison for five years; held a gun to a woman's tummy while looking for drugs in her home: spoke of feeling bad before they pinned him: medical reports apparently shows no strangulation; he fought with the officers; and medics now looking for why he felt like he couldn't breathe. They suspect drugs.....? He seemed innocent. All he did was give a fake $20.00 bill to a kid in the store who demanded the cigarettes back, but didn't get them.
Holding an expected felon in a neck hold was/is not illegal in Minnesota.
After hearing an explanation and interpretation of the state statutes and watching the subsequent riots, I have become increasingly persuaded charging the police with a higher level of crime would make obtaining conviction far more difficult .
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After hearing an explanation and interpretation of the state statutes and watching the subsequent riots, I have become increasingly persuaded charging the police with a higher level of crime would make obtaining conviction far more difficult .
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