Archives
The Truth - Is It Too Much To Ask?
John read that
Mark Zuckerberg is suing Hawaiian land owners to secure his 700-acre island getaway
.. read headlines across the internet.
“To find all these partial owners so we can pay them their fair share, we filed what is called a”quiet title” action. For most of these folks, they will now receive money for something they never even knew they had. No one will be forced off the land,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We love Hawaii and we want to be good members of the community and preserve the environment. We look forward to working closely with the community for years to come.”
.. reads the specifics of the articles (the one above comes from The Verge).
Which is exactly the truth - John Doesn’t really know. John thinks that is a journalist’s job. What he does know is that he is pissed off with click bait headlines. John thinks the body of the headline should reflect the content of the article - and if we are lucky - what will be reported will be true.
John thinks that hell might be frozen over.
Graham ponders…
… that if hell is indeed frozen over, then the kuleana owners may well give up without a fight. However, on a planet with (mainly) blue skies and golden sand, it is a lot more complicated than Zuckerberg’s somewhat self-serving explanation. How about we just note that ‘quiet title’ has been a standard means of depriving Native Hawaiians of their ancestral lands, concentrating economic power in fewer and fewer hands? Which becomes more poignant, even tragic, when you realise the nature of Hawaiians’ traditional relationship with land – not so much asset, as relative, or more:
“The land is the chief, the people merely servants.”
You could take it as a metaphor for the fragile relationship between an island people and scarce land resources if you like. But breaking that connection for personal privacy on 700 acres of unproductive land is, at the least, un-Hawaiian.