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Zuckerberg Sues Hundreds of Hawaiians To Force Property Sales To Him (msn.com)
mmell writes: Apparently, owning 700 acres of land in Hawaii isn't enough -- Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, has filed suit to force owners of several small parcels of land to sell to the highest bidder. The reason? These property owners are completely surrounded by Zuckerberg's land holdings and therefore have lawful easement to cross his property in order to get to theirs. Many of these land owners have held their land for generations, but seemingly Mr. Zuckerberg can not tolerate their presence so close to his private little slice of paradise. Landowners such as these came to own their land when their ancestors were "given" the land as Hawaiian natives. If successful in his "quiet title" court action, Mr. Zuckerberg will finally have his slice of Hawaii's beaches and tropical lands without having to deal with the pesky presence of neighbors who were on his land before he owned it. Who knew that Hawaiians were just another kind of Native Americans? CNBC reports: "The cases target a dozen small plots of so-called 'kuleana' lands that are inside the much larger property that Zuckerberg bought on Kauai. Kuleana lands are properties that were granted to native Hawaiians in the mid-1800. One suit, according to the Star-Advertiser, was filed against about 300 people who are descendants of an immigrant Portuguese sugar cane plantation worker who bought four parcels totaling two acres of land in 1894. One of that worker's great-grandchildren, Carlos Andrade, 72, lived on the property until recently, the paper said. But the retired university professor told the Star-Advertiser that he is helping Zuckerberg's case as a co-plaintiff in an effort to make sure the land is not surrendered to the county if no one in his extended clan steps up to take responsibility for paying property taxes on the plots."
Who else is going to bid for land that's surrounded entirely by someone else's land, and subject to these kinds of legal encumbrances?
The man is a bastard and a prime candidate for an urgent visit from a large group of people toting pitchforks and torches, if anyone can find any in present-day Hawaii.
From TFA, it seems like these are old titles, many of the people who inherited them have no idea they "own" these properties, and thus haven't been paying property taxes on them since 180something.
I don't much care for The Zuck, but before taking off on the all too predictable partisan political tears, people should inform themselves on which Supreme Court justices ruled which way on the Kelo decision.
What is it about having money that turns people into such assholes?
I mean really, 700 acres? How can someone not find sufficient privacy for their family on 700 acres, even if it contains a few parcels he doesn't own?
I think "Schwanzlutscher" is what you are looking for . . . but Arschloch is more appropriate, in this case . . . I'll try to think up something better, or ask some friends, since I am fluent in German, but not a native speaker . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Although I'm not a Zuckerberg fan, the headline is a little misleading. Apparently for most of these parcels, the actual ownership is unclear-- the ownership is split sometimes among hundreds of descendants of the original owners, and in some cases it's not clear who owns it, or if they're even alive or if they're not, who the heirs are. This seems to be the only way to clear title to the land.
I wish I owned an acre of land right in the middle of where he wants to build his house. I'd put a big barbed-wire fence around it, park the biggest, ugliest, smelliest old trailer I could find on it, demand continued access rights and refuse to sell at any money.
If you read the article, these are parcels of land that no one lives on, but more than one people *own*. What his case is doing is forcing the land to be sold so that those owners can come forward and get paid for it. Most owners don't even realize they own the land.
So no one is being *forced out of their homes*. Basically they are getting money they didn't realize they had.
What's German for "Rich Pathetic Sociopathic Bastard..."?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Zuckerberg
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Who knew that Hawaiians were just another kind of Native Americans?
Apparently everyone but the author. What a moron.
People have been saying it for years, but I really feel like this place isn't what it used to be. Here we have a terrible, click-baity headline followed by a terrible, lazily editorialized summary, none of which is "News for Nerds" or "Stuff that Matters."
Really, does this impact us in some way that I'm not seeing? At least with stories about Steve Jobs's megayacht, there was a cool megayacht to be interested in.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
I don't have high expectations for the quality of the content on Slashdot, but this summary is particularly bad.
Regardless of what your stance is on this matter, the fact remains that the summary is highly biased and editorialized, to the point of the entire submission being rubbish.
Crap like
and
and
and especially
should have all been removed, and doing so would have made the submission far more informative and objective.
The "Who knew ... just another kind of Native Americans?" junk is particularly stupid. The people called "Native Americans" today are just the descendants (ignoring how many of them are also descended from Europeans, sometimes proportionally more so than from non-Europeans) of the most recent waves of migration to the Americas from Eurasia. It's rarely mentioned how these later waves likely destroyed previous cultures in the Americas, such as the Clovis people, because that wouldn't fit with the leftist narrative of today's "Native Americans" being perpetual victims.
The editors should have seriously reworked this submission's summary. Perhaps it would have been better just to throw it out completely, it's so inherently bad.
This summary and all of its obvious bias just makes those against Zuckerberg's actions look like kooks and extremists.
If Hawaiians let us build our Thirty Meter Telescope, we will agree to cement Mark Zuckerberg into the foundation thereof.
"640 acres should be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
RTFA. Ownership of a grant total of 8 acres entirely enclosed within Zuckerberg's land is unclear. Nobody lives there. Nobody's paid taxes on the land in decades. The lawsuit basically says, "step up or shut up." If anyone actually steps up and says, "It's mine, here's the taxes and the proof I own it," then it doesn't get sold.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
This. Despite the Power To The People headline, this is something he's forced to do under Hawaiian law if he wants to have any hope of a clear title to the property.
More interesting is probably the term that Native Hawaiians are using to describe him, which would be "haole".
Well, he is haole. The meaning of the word in the Hawaiian language is really "foreigner" but in common talk here, it has come to be a sometimes derisive term for a Caucasian. It can be, but is certainly not necessarily, racist or derogatory, and it isn't either of those in the true Hawaiian meaning of the word.
The Zuckerberg development was the lead front page story in today's Star Advertiser (our local Honolulu newspaper). It seemed to be to be presented in a negative light, as in, here goes another rich haole from the mainland grabbing Native Hawaiian land. It's easy to see it that way but in Hawai`i hardly anything is simple or straightforward, and I'm reserving judgment until I learn more about it, though siding with Zuckerberg would be pretty distasteful.
The lawsuit(s) being filed are to determine ownership of the parcels of land. Not to force the sale of the land.
Zuckerberg is suing to find out who owns the land so that he can negotiate to purchase the land from them. Right now he can't purchase the land because no one knows who owns it.
He is not suing to force the sale, he is suing to make the sale possible.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Let's please not. The reason his last name means "sugar mountain" in German is because in the late 18th Century the various Germanic empires forced all Jews to have surnames, instead of being known as (e.g.) Yeshua ben Youssef -- a patronym, not a surname. If your family was on bad terms with the local magistrate then you might have had a surname that was actually insulting rather than merely ridiculous. So unless you're interested in reviving a particularly vile brand of antisemitism, please let's not give this man an insulting surname, even if you think he deserves shame and ridicule.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Ha-ole literally translates into "without breath" as Hawaiians in the time of Captain Cook's encounter greeted each other by touching foreheads together and exchanging breaths (the honi). Cook, obviously not Hawaiian, was unaware of the custom and didn't greet the Hawaiians in this way and was assumed to be "without breath." The term entered the vernacular and today is a pejorative for Caucasians.