Evicted Newcastle squatters deserve sympathy, but law must rule

Whilst I have sympathy for people that are struggling to find a place to live there was a phrase from one of the illegal squatters that raised alarm bells.

He is quoted as saying "what right should anyone have to deprive people of housing". This was in the context of refusing to leave the premises he had been squatting within.

Fair enough that the squatters are doing it tough and need help, but to illegally occupy a person's house and not recognise this as illegal?

What is next by that logic, taking a person's car saying "what right should anyone have to deprive me of transport"?

I know people who have squatted, but when the owners have found them the squatters recognise they shouldn't be there and flee.

They don't deprive people of their property rights, and it would be a very scary world if such behaviour is allowed to take over the city.

HOW can anyone claim that nuclear reactors are "safe" or "clean"?

They are really just an expensive and dangerous way to boil water for steam turbines.

Nuclear fission generates hundreds of man-made radioisotopes that remain highly radioactive and lethal to humans for at least a million years.

Even the structural components of a nuclear plant become highly radioactive waste.

Globally, nuclear reactors have produced hundreds of thousands of tonnes of high-level radioactive nuclear waste. Yet there is nowhere on Earth safe enough for long-term storage of this lethal debris.

In day-to-day operation, reactors routinely emit radioactive gases into the atmosphere. Strontium-90, Iodine-131, Caesium-137, Tritium (H3) and Carbon-14 leach into nearby water sources, farmlands, livestock and fisheries: contaminating the human food chain.

Potential disasters can also suddenly occur in the event of any serious incidents, such as pipe corrosion, equipment failure, power outages, loss of coolant, operator mistakes or malfeasance.

Obviously, nuclear power is too expensive and too dangerous to ever be used in Australia.

GARRY Linnell's birthday letter to the internet paid homage to Tim Berners-Lee and others who believed the net would, in Linnell's term, "democratise the planet" ("Happy birthday internet, you sorry thing you", Newcastle Herald 29/4).

While this may be correct, the internet's real genesis lies with the US military and its Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA), which after more than a decade of development resulted in the ARPA-net in 1969.

Even a 2016 Guardian article on history of the internet acknowledged this, noting that "without ARPA, the internet wouldn't exist". ARPA became DARPA in 1972 when it added Defence to its title.

The big tech companies have always had close links in personnel and funding with the intelligence agencies of their various countries. Even the founders of Google developed their breakthrough search engine with a CIA-backed grant while at Stanford University.

A dual-use (military/civilian) project from the start, the internet has long been utilised for its surveillance potential. The public were offered a free giant global library and communication system; society's gatekeepers used it to spy as they saw fit; largely in secret until Australian Julian Assange and his journalistic sources blew the whistle and earned the wrath of US "justice" in the process.

This revolution has only just begun. Privacy, pre-internet, is disappearing rapidly. Everything we do with a phone is tracked. Every financial attraction, every journey, every search, every like and dislike.

Anyone who says "an honest person has nothing to fear" needs to re-read Brave New World and Animal Farm, or remember the way that almost all dissent was dismissed as "misinformation" while the phone became an overt surveillance tool during the pandemic.

EMERITUS Professor Lyndall Ryan OAM was a member of our book club for many years. Lyndall brought with her an immense intellect, knowledge of history, charm, wit and humour.

And sometimes quite dodgy cooking. We all loved and respected her, and our book club is much poorer without her. Ave atque vale, Lyndall.

CARL Stevenson ("Support victims, forget gender", Letters, 2/5), are you serious?

In too many cases it's not domestic violence against women, it's murder, and it's almost always a man doing the killing. Men are not dying at a rate anywhere near that which women are.

For someone that contributes to The Newcastle Herald letter section as often as you, I'd think you might have thought that letter through.

IN reply to Julie Robertson ("Urgent fixes, not nitpicking", Letters, 3/5), I'm not in denial regarding domestic violence, I did not say forget women, I mentioned facts that rarely get mentioned, that it's not only women who suffer.

I suggested the re-establishment of neighbourhood watch as a starting point to what is a very serious situation.

What do you offer apart from criticism? Maybe it's you who is in denial, when you are blind to recognise why I wrote my letter.

Australia has a tragic and very serious domestic violence societal problem. Getting to a good understanding of the causes of the problem and how to fix the problem will, to say the least, be exceedingly difficult.

A good starting point would be to refer to, and talk about it, as Family Violence rather than Domestic Violence and for Mr. Albanese to appoint a Federal Minister for Family Violence reporting directly to the Cabinet.

That will reflect how serious this problem is and a good first step in getting it fixed.

I READ Gus Gould has been fined by the NRL for making controversial statements about the game.

Whilst I have a dislike of Gould and his commentary, I do believe that on this occasion he is correct.

The game has become stupid. Too many technical rules. The game needs to be simplified.