Posted on 03/09/2019 12:41:49 PM PST by Jyotishi
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.
Oprah’s “compound” on Maui is as posh and ostentatious. Ditto for bill gates’s on hood canal Washington. Huge wall.
Do as I say, not as I do.....
I’ll double that.
Arsenic residues, why?
Please see #14.
Exactly!
Zuckerberg on Kauai, Oprah on Maui, Obama on Oahu, Pelosi on the Big Island . . . something’s up in Hawaii.
It’s naturally occurring in soil, totally organic. That’s why all the fuss about organically grown produce amuses me, there’s some pretty nasty organic stuff in the world.
Yes it is beautiful except that the soil of sugarcane plantations is usually toxic from arsenic residues.
Yes it is beautiful but it’s a POS! Unless you have scads of money to cover up the piece of shytness, I wouldn’t live there for all the money in the world........no baby
Yes. It's a containment area for ultra wealthy Lear-Jet commies.
one of the richest men in the world, but can’t get a decent haircut
lol
“A wall for me but none for thee”.How predictable.
With today's aircraft capable of flying 12+ hours non-stop I can safely say that I'll never again set foot in Hawaii...even when it's on the way to somewhere I want to go.
Not if the walls are made out of BLACK lava. Because we all know that blacks can't be racist!
Yes, thank you. They call them Pirates for a reason.
Jobs stole from Xerox, and relied on Wozniak. He was creative in the general sense, but ruthlessly unethical, and not the best engineer. Neither was Gates the best. They were the most committed to exploitation - as was Zuckerberg.
And what is Zuckerberg’s great contribution of genius? Merchandising narcissism, and selling the harvested produce to buyers in and out of government.
I prefer Newton, Tesla, et al, to the modern brand of so-called genius.
Wonder if he will still have the house after his divorce.
What a great post..!
Wow..!
I’m currently locked out of Facebook - the screen asked me to log back in for security reasons which it occasionally does on my iPad, but it gave me a new screen with my first name and a bobble head, when I typed in my password the screen shimmered but it just sat there, it didn’t say if it took it or not. I did this four times and it told me my account was suspended for suspicious activity. Then it gave me an option to prove who I was, a screen of ten comments where I had to check if I posted the comment or not. Several were trick comments I would never say, some were several years old, some were so generic I don’t remember if I said it or not. You could only get two wrong, and I failed four times. E## you Mark Zuckerbg, take your FB and shove it. Same test with photos of your supposed friends, I didn’t recognize half of them.
He will build a bridge. And one going west to China.
That’s the Big Island, which is 300 miles from Kauai.
I thought Kauai was very nice.
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