A Trip Inside Mark Zuckerberg's Sprawling, Embattled Compound in Hawaii

Pila'a, Kauai -- Last Sunday morning, more than a dozen cars were parked along a six-foot wall built around Mark Zuckerberg's vast retreat on the northeast corner of Kauai, a small, remote Hawaiian island that's home to 70,000 people. The gate, which is almost always locked shut, was open, so you could walk right past the Facebook-blue sign that reads "PRIVATE PROPERTY Thank you for not trespassing." The lava rock wall, which Zuckerberg started building in 2016, inflamed some of his neighbors. It's built on a bluff a mile from the ocean and now stretches for nearly a mile along Zuckerberg's property, making it impossible to see the water from the road.

Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan acquired more than 700-acres on Kauai in 2014 by purchasing two adjacent beachside properties reportedly for more than $100 million. Last year, he purchased another 89-acres for $45.3 million. His property extends a mile inland over a former sugarcane plantation. Multiple streams flow across the land to the ocean, carving out forested valleys through rolling pastures grazed by cattle.

While the Facebook CEO likely hoped this corner of Kauai would be his private oasis, his property is peppered with more than a dozen smaller parcels of what are called Kuleana lands--land that was awarded during the 1850s and has been passed down for generations by local families. For the last several years, these lands Zuckerberg doesn't own have been the source of simmering conflict with the community, as he has taken aggressive steps to buy or otherwise control a part of Kauai.

In the latest development in the ongoing saga, we were let inside ZuckSaturday, March 9, 2019erberg's gates for an open house of sorts for four of these properties, which as a result of an arcane measure called a quiet title action will be auctioned on the front steps of Kauai's Fifth Circuit Court Building on March 22.

The crowd waiting to tour the property included a mix of Hawaiians, Kauai residents, lawyers, journalists, and Zuckerberg employees. Many people seemed to already know each other. Some exchanged a hug and kiss on the cheek, as customary in Hawaii.

In theory, the people that showed up were all there to decide if they want to bid, but really, many came for the rare opportunity to glimpse inside the compound of one of the richest people the world. The whole act of building a giant wall invites intrigue and suspicion.

"I'm just curious to see what it looks like, and I'm curious what he's doing with it because I've heard a lot of different things," said Steph Klockenbrink, a 24-year-old who runs an organic farm on the same street as Zuckerberg's property.

"It's locked down a lot of the time, so just having the opportunity to see it is cool," said Matthew James, a 28-year-old landscaper. "The fact that it seems hush-hush and no one really knows what's going on kinda raises a red flag."

It was hardly only curious observers, though. The controversy over the lands has prompted outrage, and some people were there to register their grievance and do research. Kaiulani Mahuka, who hosts a radio show on Kauai Community Radio about Hawaiian sovereignty, told me she was at the open house as a "Kanaka Maoli," meaning Hawaiian, and said it was "a war crime to sell these lands."

"The lands were deeded in perpetuity, and that means forever," said Mahuka. "Kuleana, you don't own it--your family belongs to it."

Kuleana is a Hawaiian value that translates to responsibility and refers to the reciprocal relationship people have with the land to care for it. The land, in turn, has a kuleana to provide and care for its stewards. In the 1850s, the Hawaiian Kingdom allocated the Kuleana lands, which were intended to go to Hawaiians who already lived on and worked the land. Before this, Native Hawaiians did not conceive of land ownership but instead shared land communally. The Kuleana lands were meant to be passed down to descendants of the grantees forever.

Individual heirs now often claim tiny fractions, and some families collectively use the land. The quiet title action has been used to allow any co-tenant, regardless of the size of their stake, to dissolve relationships with other co-tenants, sort of like a divorce. The plaintiff who starts a quiet title action must notify everyone with an interest, which often requires detailed genealogy research to determine all of the heirs. The co-tenants can only stop the process once it has been initiated if they come up with an agreement. Otherwise, a judge will order all the shares be put up at public auction, forcing heirs to sell. Fighting the process can be prohibitively costly.

18 Hawaii Island Schools found to have arsenic in their soil

The Hawaii State Department of Education and the Hawaii Department of Health is implementing an environmental hazard plan after 18 schools were shown to have arsenic and organochlorine pesticides present in the soil.

KITV Channel 4
Thursday, March 7th 2019, 11:37 AM HST by KITV Web Staff

A soil study was done on 23 Hawaii Island schools on the east side.

Now the Hawaii State Department of Education and the Hawaii Department of Health is implementing an environmental hazard plan after 18 of those schools were shown to have arsenic and organochlorine pesticides present in the soil.

The review began in 2017 to evaluate the presence of arsenic due to historic use of arsenic-based herbicides when the land was utilized for sugar cane cultivation prior to the schools being built.

Full story:

https://www.kitv.com/story/40088878/18-hawaii-island-schools-found-to-have-arsenic-in-their-soil

Stole his business idea

Stole all the shares from his BEST friend

Secretly sold users’ data

Stated in a confidential email to a friend that people who trust him are "dumb-f*cks".

Married in the community proprety state of California, the very day AFTER he took Facebook public.

Requested nude photos of users to “protect them against the risk of revenge porn”.

Secretly tried to get hospitals to release vast stores of patient data “so I can help cure diseases”.

Initially pursued total rights ownership of images uploaded to FB; if you'd been photoed as a happy youth with, say, a can of Coors then later got really famous, Zuck could be paid by Coors for zero work and YOUR old photo in a new ad while you, the centerpiece of the ad, would get NOTHING. Struck down after lengthy legal battles.

De-platformed numerous Conservatives because he didn't agree with their views, couldn't define hate-speech when asked by Congress.

Secretly requested banks give him his users' financial data, including transactions, so “my users can check their balances on my site."

Digitally permitted his housing advertisers to filter out customers whose search histories were strongly associated with terms like "handicapped" , "mobility scooter" and "guidedog".

Admonished that people "build bridges instead of walls", all while building walls around his Palo Alto homes and around the huge Kauai Estate he bought and then threw the Hawaiians off of, an effort requiring 300 seperate lawsuits against local Hawaiian land claimants.

Established a "trustworthiness index" for ALL his facebook users while disclosing it to none of them.

Altered FB algorithms to flag content from conservative publications as spam.

Revered Augustus Caesar, leader of Rome who assured 200 years of peace via harsh rule, possibly arranging the execution of his own grandson. On a wedding anniversary trip to Rome, Zuck gushed so effusively over sculptures and monuments dedicated to Augustus that his wife joked that three people, not two, were on their trip.

For years, Zuck traditionally closed high-level Facebook executive meetings by shouting, "DOMINATION..!", perhaps half-jokingly.

Proposed installation in the homes of FB users special Facebook cameras that would monitor users and follow them around as they went about their private lives inside their homes. But the cameras, Zuckerberg assured, would come with privacy settings which Facebook would, like, totally respect, or something.

Asked for user telephone numbers for 2 factor authentication but within weeks used that data for marketing purposes. If users chose to share their entire contact list, Facebook also shared that data with advertisers, even phone numbers of people who NEVER had a facebook account. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, FB pleged to reinvigorate user privacy but neither of these practices has stopped.

In the runup to the 2018 midterm elections, FB removed over 800 conservative political pages and accounts in a clamp down on what the social media company arbitrarily termed, “inauthentic behavior”. The ambitious political move affected 66 million FB users, most of them Conservative.

Permitted the search term "white genocide" to be used as a targeting criterion to aim advertising for products at 170,000 users who interacted with that subject.

When at their SF HQ in 2016 FB employees replaced a mural slogal, "Black Lives Matter" with the words, "All Lives Matter", Zuck returned the slogan to its original and reprimanded the employees as, "malicious and disrespectful".

In South Sudan in late Nov. 2018, Facebook permitted the auctioning of a CHILD BRIDE, age 16. The girl was sold for 500 cows, 3 cars and $10,000 and went into hiding. Five men, including some "high-ranking government officials," bid on the girl, according to Children's rights organization Plan International. At the same time it was revealed that Mexican child molesters had been using Facebook's Messenger app to collude regarding available kids and ongoing grooming prospects.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.