Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Considerations Concerning Blockades

Monday, August 3rd, 1998

Considerations Concerning Blockades


What happens if you try to break a bomb-proof network

On July 23, 1998, the swiss Federal Police (Bundespolizei, commonly reffered to by its abbreviation “BUPO”) has sent a letter to about 100 swiss Internet-Service Providers demanding blockage of ten Webpages containing revisionist, reactionist material from Neonazis, Antisemits and so on. This letter is available here. I will not go into a political or juridical discussion here whether these sites need to be censored or not, but simply take a look whether it is actually possible to block sites which contain “unpleasant” material.

Well then, let’s take a look at possible methods of blocking.

  • DNS-Relocating
    The Service which maps domains (e.g. discordia.ch) to IP-numbers
    (e.g. 192.168.1.14) can easiliy be used to block the lookup of
    such domains and relocate the user to some other page. This only
    affects the users which use the respective DNS. Normally, users
    use the DNS of their respective ISP because of speed, but are in
    no way obliged to. Any user can use any DNS in the world. Furtheron,
    any user can bypass the DNS if he knows the IP-address already.
    Time needed to block is about 5-15 minutes per domain.
  • IP-Blocking
    Depending on equipment, in most places IP-Blocking should be no
    problem either. In this case not only the lookup but the actual
    site really gets blocked. Any attempt to transfer data directly
    to or from the blocked site will fail. The Point here is “directly”.
    A heavily used method to avoid traffic in the internet is called
    proxy. As soon as a page is requested by proxy it is cached within
    and remains there for further reference or until it expires. So
    if a page is accessed via proxy, the proxy actually gets the page,
    caches it and gives a copy to the user. So a user can use a proxy
    somewhere else to surpass the block. Most proxys are private or
    semiprivate, but there are a lot of public proxys out there, like
    Anonymizer. Further problems
    include the fact, that there are Sites which host thousands of
    Sites on one address, which cannot be blocked selectively, thus
    a denial of service. Time needed to block a site is about 5-15 minutes.
  • Filtering Proxys
    The most restrictive method of blocking a site includes access
    to the internet through a proxying firewall, common in some
    bigger companies. This makes it impossible to get pages directly,
    instead a proxy has to get the file first before the user may get
    it. In most environments (especially ISPs) this is not feasible,
    since a lot of services won’t work anymore (like IRC, CuSeeMe,
    Netmeeting, RealAudio, telnet and many more), due to the inability
    of proxying realtime-connections. However, talking only of webpages,
    this as been proven as surpassable as well, the
    Anti-Filtering-Proxy-Proxy
    defeats this. This method of blocking isn’t trivial to implement
    will need some month time, a firewall and has such severe drawbacks
    that nobody except high-security environments (which actually want
    to monitor their users) will want to implement it.

Not surprising the whole issue has given rise to several methods of
countermeasures against such blockades.

  • Mirroring
    Download the whole site, put it up elsewhere as well. This has happened
    as the german zine “Radikal” was to be blocked (including its
    provider xs4all). Hundreds of mirrors of Radikal spread everywhere.
    The whole issue had to be dropped due to too much sites which had the
    Information readily available. This is a matter of hours.
  • Relocating
    Change of address and/or provider. This can be done within a week
    or two if the provider of the DNS has to be changed. Otherwise this
    can be accomplished in hours. A change of the actual address represents
    a nuisance for blockers as well as for people wanting the
    information on the site.
  • Other Protocols
    Everything that can be put on a webpage can be posted on Usenet (News)
    or be made downloadable on IRC (Internet Relay Chat). And of course,
    probably many more. While in the Usenet, only groups which are wanted
    may be gotten, this doesn’t help against material published in the
    wrong group. It is common that people who don’t like each other
    crosspost to the opposite groups (i.e. rec.startrek and rec.sf-lovers
    which can’t stand each other). The IRC on the other hand is realtime
    and can’t be controlled with technical measures. The same applies to
    other similar services like ICQ and Hotline.
  • Eternity Device
    Published in Phrack #51, the
    eternity device is a distributed data haven, where all data can
    come in, but nothing ever can be deleted. Access to the device is
    granted through a
    Eternity Service
  • Anti-Filtering-Proxy-Proxy
    As mentionned above. This can be used to defeat Filtering proxies,
    by setting up a reachable proxy-gateway on another webserver. Anyone
    with a bit unix-experience can set up one. It’s available
    here
  • Public Proxies
    Several services all over the internet already offer free proxying
    for anyone. This is mostly used in order to be able to surf anonymous,
    but these proxies also circumvent IP-Blocks. Well known services include
    Anonymizer,
    LPWA (Lucent
    Personalized Web Assistant),
    Aixs and the
    Onion Router. To these
    come hundreds of proxy-servers (caching-proxies like squid and webfilters
    like junkbuster) which are not intentionally open to the public, but can
    be used anyway.
  • Tunnels
    Used sometimes for piercing filtering firewalls
    are tunnels which tunnel information through another protocol.
    This needs some nifty technical knowledge. In won’t go into details
    here since I can’t imagine anyone tunneling just to get some information.

Of course, there are other, non-technical implications of attempts to
censor, most noteably relocating the server out of jurisdiction to a place
with “friendlier” law. But this won’t be covered here, we solely took
a look at technical possibilities. In the end we have to admit that
blocking sites is of no use and very costly. To block a dozen sites,
a system administrator will surely need at least an hour, which is
going to be very costly if hundreds of sites should be blocked. On the
other hand, defeating the blocks is a matter of seconds, and in case
of heavy mirroring being done, not only a circumvention but also increases
cost on side of the censor (the BUPO in above case) and on side of the
ISPs which have to do the blocking. In the end, nothing is done against
the sites containing the to be censored material, but instead a lot of
money will be wasted, the hate-groups will still flourish (or alternatively
the child-pornography traders) and we all loose.

Peter Keel,

1998-08-03

Updated April 14, 1999

“The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be”
— Lao Tse

Open the Sources

Wednesday, January 1st, 1997

Don’t give in to the Dark Side

There is a growing pool of software, originally written for MS-DOS, which now
becomes more and more impossible to run. People maybe liked a certain program
or used it for their hobbies, but now, they have another Operating System, and
they don’t want to use DOS or to reboot just to use this peace of program.

This, of course, happened to me with roleplaying-related programs when
I switched to Linux. I only use DOS for playing computer-games, and I only
boot it when I am sure that I will need it for an hour or more. Surely not
for using some DOS program which probably even runs on the commandline.

So there goes the solution: Recompile it. Simply. If there is a source, I
normally do that, and so I’ve got quite a collection of programs which I
ported from DOS to Linux. And so, I’d like everyone to tell:

Release your Sourcecodes!

It doesn’t hurt you to release a source-code of some program you wrote
five years ago. There is plenty of possibility to recycle old sourcecodes,
even when they’re written in some weird language such as BASIC.

So I take a look now at some possibilities and quirks regarding different
programming languages, their implementations and their portability. Especially
in regard to Unix/Linux.

Where, please?

Todays standard is C. Or some variation of it like Objective-C or C++.
So the point is:

  • Port your Program to C if possible.
  • Make it run on another operating system.

We’re gonna use the GNU C-Compiler, because it’s one of the best, and it’s
available on nearly every platform (Unix, Windows NT, OS/2, DOS, only
to mention the most common ones).

GNU C or GCC comes in three different variations, as C-compiler, C++-compiler
and objective-C-compiler. And then there are some add-ons (or merely pre-
processors) which can translate pascal and fortran to C. So there’s no such
big problem translating fortran or pascal to C. So here we go examining some
compilers and how their code can be translated to GCC.

Note: You cannot normally use conio.h or dos.h for programs not running on
DOS. So this must be circumvented in some way.

What general problems are to expect?

  • Command-line based programs should easily be ported. Problems can arise
    out of different length of data-types.
  • Character based programs using console io might give some troubles. The
    problem most often encountered will be that other operating systems do
    not allow direct manipulation of their console. This appears with conio.h
  • Graphically enhanced programs really aren’t easy to port. Instead of using
    language-specific or self-programmed graphic enhancements, svgalib must be
    used. This can be as difficult as rewriting the whole program from scratch.

What problems are to expect using specific languages?

C

  • DJGPP – The GNU-C for DOS, no changes necessary.
  • Symantec C – dos.h and conio.h, as well as makefiles
  • Turbo C – dos.h and conio.h, as well as makefiles
  • Borland C – dos.h and conio.h, as well as makefiles
  • Microsoft C – dos.h and conio.h, as well as makefiles
  • Quick C – dos.h and conio.h, as well as makefiles

Pascal

  • Turbo Pascal – dos.h and conio.h

Basic

  • GW or MS-Basic – line-numbering
  • Turbo Basic
  • Quick Basic

C Problems

dos.h

This one defines variable types and FAT-filesystem-specific things. Problems
can arise out of different lengths of data types (16 vs 32 bits).

conio.h

conio.h (console i/o) does not exist on Unix. There is a port of conio.h,
but this shouldn’t be used. Instead, ncurses.h or curses.h should be used.

Peter Keel,

1997-01

Principles for a New World

Saturday, December 28th, 1996

Making the World a better Place
  1. Sustainable Development
    Economy and Ecology ARE the same. We support a sustainable development
    where everyone pays what he REALLY uses – in form of ressources, bad
    used ressources and the resulting pollution in ANY way. This would
    for instance result in heavily raised costs for not-sustainable
    ressources like oil, coal, gas and uranium. On one hand, the
    transport-costs would raise, but also would the construction and
    production of less consumpting cars, planes and ships.
  2. Pay for Consumption
    This goes along with the sustainable development, and makes it
    possible to work. People generally don’t give a piss about
    anything, unless it touches their purses. This way it is possible
    to tax consumption of non-sustainable goods, while ecological more
    eloquent products get off cheaper. On the other side, people
    shouldn’t pay for their production – it’s economical nonsense.
  3. Freedom of Consumption
    The measures mentionned under (1) and (2) will result in some kind
    of Freedom of Consumption. Of course can you drive a Sportscar
    that uses 20l/100Km – but you’ve got to PAY for that gas. You’re
    still completely free to buy what you want, as long you can afford
    it. You might want to eat heavily herbizidized (but wonderful-looking)
    apples – but the apples from biological planting will be cheaper…
  4. Freedom of Production
    Nobody will mind that you repair your house, since production will
    not be taxed. Do it yourself, it will be cheaper. You want to sell
    something? As long as you already have it, you will have to pay
    nothing, since there’s no consumption. If you want to produce and
    sell, lets say chairs, you can do it. All you will have to pay for
    the ressources, BUT NOT FOR YOUR TIME USED FOR PRODUCING SOMETHING.
  5. Freedom of Information
    The most valuable thing on earth ever been is KNOW-HOW. Knowing how
    to make a fire, knowing how to plant… Information is maybe the thing
    linked to humanity the most. Information is power, time, money,
    business, survival – nearly everything. It ist understandable that
    one will protect its own knowledge for the sake of his business,
    for instance. What ist not understandable is the protection of
    information which the producer wanted to see free. This is just
    whithelding information from the public – called censorship.
    Whether this is done to protect some ‘moral minority’ or to protect
    children from getting access to/viewing it, its just stupid to
    whitheld it. This applies also to violent/pervert and otherwise
    not liked pictures, movies, texts, books, online-Information
    etc. If you want to protect children from things like this,
    take care of it yourself – the state ist not responsible for
    protecting your child from REALITY!
  6. Freedom of Speech
    Freedom of Speech, and Freedom of Information, these two go very
    close. Since if you want to say something not only to a specific
    person but everyone, it is considered information. But there has
    to be still a fine line – if one says that the governement consists
    of idiots, it should be allowed (even stronger expressions). But
    if one appelates to shoot the government because it consists of idiots, that’s quite another thing. The same goes to fascism,
    racism, sexism and the like (But they surely won’t mind if I
    answer on a abuse of strangers with an abuse of racists, don’t
    do they? :) After all, the best answer to a bad book is a good
    book.

Peter Keel,

1996-12-28

(probably)

Attitudes towards Victimless Crimes

Wednesday, January 24th, 1996

Proseminar work

Peter Keel
Student of sociology

24. January 1996


Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Thesis
  3. Survey
    1. College Freshmen Report on homosexuality, abortion and marijuana
  4. Conclusion

1. Introduction

Victimless Crimes as defined by Edwin Schur [1] are
crimes which do not have any evident victim. They consist of actions which
are outlawed because they violate moral standards. Reason number two, the
protection of the subject from itself can be traced back to the violation
of moral standards, since obviously the same actions are not outlawed in
other cultures. Most of these victimless crimes differ wildly among cultures,
examples might be the consumption of hashish and alcohol in the western
society compared to the Islamic society, or prostitution now and by the times
of the ancient in greek. These victimless crimes must therefore be a product of culture, and
not a measure to insure health or protection of the subject from itself. What
gives even more proof to this, is the fact, that criminal prosecution costs
more than the (if required) medical treatment of the offenders. Nobody will
spend much money just for someone to be protected from self. But money
will be spent to ensure the own moral standards. Of course, this will not
be admitted in most cases.
Speaking of damage, we should define damage as the subjective feeling
of being hurt. (See also Jeffrey H. Reiman, [6]). We
cannot speak of damage, if it is wanted, e.g. by masochists,
or if it is inevitable for getting the desired effect (e.g. dentists, drugs,
or extreme-sports). For victimless crimes, there is no damage done to:

  • physical and psychical integrity of the people
  • property of the involved people and society

This type of crime is defined by the willingness of all involved parties
to commit such an action, and no harm is done to other people, except of
the violation of law and moral standards. This for instance is true for
the use of illegal drugs, for suicide or for prostitution, but not for
bribery or black-market trade, since there is damage done to society or
the state or to property of them. So we come to some actions which might
be considered victimless crimes, which either are outlawed or not. Of
course, nearly everything can be outlawed (such as not wearing a veil
as a woman). This is only a small list of actual or historical outlawed
actions in western society that can [*] be
considered victimless crimes.

  • Use of drugs (alcohol, tobacco, coffee, marijuana, opiates, etc)
  • Prostitution
  • Homosexuality
  • Suicide
  • Abortion
  • Gambling
  • Exhibitionism

It is necessary to know that outlawing of such acts might lead to further
crimes, accomplished in the attempt to commit aforementioned actions.
Particular examples include crimes for getting money to buy drugs, smuggling
(especially popular in Switzerland was smuggling of coffee at the beginning
of this century) or the exploitation of prostitutes. For most outlawed
victimless crimes which involve goods or services, a black market will evolve.
When deciding what is victimless crime or not, it must be clear that such
“secondary” crimes are a result of the outlawing of such actions and
are not to be confused with the actual consequences. But I will not go into
discussion of these particular actions, and whether they should be considered
criminal acts and outlawed or not. [**]

2. Thesis

One might expect that the attitude towards victimless crimes is subject to
changes over time. While this is true, no evident direction of this attitude
change will be remarkable. It is not to expect that a general trend regarding
victimless crimes will be visible, instead, different actions will be judged
completely different. There is to expect however, a typical difference between

  • Urbanized and rural territories
  • Higher and lower educations
  • Younger and older people

The first ones generally taking a more liberal position. Eventually, there will
be some differences between male and female persons on certain subjects, but
no apparent coherent point of view towards different actions. It is not to
expect that a generally more liberal or restrictive point of view is depending
on gender.

What I also expect is that the attitude towards victimless crimes changes
over time in waveforms, altering states of more liberal and more restrictive
views, but not a general trend towards liberal or prohibitive views. I expect
the views on different subjects to evolve differently.
In a geographic context, the attitude towards victimless crimes is also
expected to be different. While most restrictive societies as islamic ones
will likely outlaw various actions of their people, such as not wearing a
veil as woman (clearly a victimless crime, since only the moral standards of
the respective society are hurt), western society will also show different
standards. The USA for instance, clearly has more strict moral standards.
It was, for instance, possible for the US-state Colorado to outlaw
homosexuality [5] in 1993 for a short period of time.

Despite these differences, I expect that there will be no evident trend in
the attitude towards victimless crimes in general
. People will judge
different victimless crimes different, depending on culture. There is no
consciousness that these crimes have their victimlessness in common.

3. Survey

Based on the available data, which, in my case, consist essentially of the

Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1995 [4],

which is an annual statistical report of the USA by the Utilization of Criminal
Justice Statistics Project at the Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center,
University at Albany, Albany, New York, USA, for the U.S. Department of Justice,
Bureau of Justice Statistics.

I took a look at the college freshmen report. This
is a report from a survey on a sample which consists of 200’000 people entering
the freshmen classes each fall. The Survey is conducted by the Higher Education
Research Institute (HERI).

3.1 college freshmen report on homosexuality, abortion and marijuana.

Tables 2.110, 2.111 and 2.114 in the above mentionned sourcebook give us the
following data. This compiled table (Table 1) shows no information on the
gender of the subjects.

Supports prohibition of
Year Homosexuality Abortion Marijuana
1977 48.60 % 44.30 % 47.10 %
1978 46.30 % 43.30 % 50.50 %
1979 47.30 % 46.70 % 54.00 %
1980 48.90 % 46.40 % 60.70 %
1981 48.60 % 46.10 % 64.00 %
1982 47.20 % 45.20 % 70.60 %
1983 49.00 % 45.20 % 74.30 %
1984 47.80 % 46.20 % 77.10 %
1985 47.90 % 45.10 % 78.20 %
1986 52.20 % 41.20 % 78.70 %
1987 53.10 % 41.30 % 80.70 %
1988 49.00 % 43.00 % 80.70 %
1989 54.40 % 35.30 % 83.30 %
1990 44.40 % 35.10 % 81.40 %
1991 42.20 % 37.00 % 79.10 %
1992 37.60 % 35.90 % 77.00 %
1993 36.20 % 37.60 % 71.80 %
1994 33.90 % 40.30 % 67.90 %
1995 30.60 % 41.60 % 66.20 %
Average 45.54 % 41.94 % 70.70 %
Deviation 6.38 3.92 10.70
Variance 40.66 15.38 114.51

Table 1

I also calculated the average, deviation and variance for the sum of all
values. The average is 52.72, deviation 14.85 and variance 220.57. This
means that the values are enough dispersed to not have any interconnection.
To see the things better, we can put this as graphic, and can recognize
general trends and the dispersion of attitude towards different subjects.

report 1
report 2
Figure 1

Since the data used in this survey is very big, one can assume that the
data given represents a better educated part of US-citizens very well,
it might well be the most representative survey ever conducted. Representative
in this case, of course, for college freshmen in the USA. On the fact that
this survey is conducted every fall since 1976, one can try to make assumptions
on the future, respectively the present. The college freshmen of 1976 will
now be roughly in their mid-thirties. According to the data, 12.9 percent
of college graduates think marijuana should be free, 12.9 percent think it
should be a minor violation, 50 percent think it should be used for medical
purposes and 22.1 percent oppose anything but a complete prohibition. The
current values for college freshmen seem also not to differ very much from
the current general attitude towards victimless crimes (excerpt from Tables
2.68 and 2.111 of source [4]).

Supports prohibition of
1994 Homosexuality Abortion Marijuana
all citizen No Data 38.40 72.00
college freshmen 33.90 40.30 67.90

Table 2

It is not to expect that the data for Europe will come very close to these
numbers, but one can assume that the attitudes will spread similar on different
subjects [****]. Also interesting might be the high-point
in 1989, in which the most prohibitive opinions regarding homosexuality and
marijuana are recorded, along with the smallest number of prohibitive
views towards abortion. This can not be explained with a general restrictive
– and perhaps religious influenced – opinion, but it seems that this goes
along with the victory of the republicans, taking over more than fifty percent
of the seats in the white house. Also, the rise of the anti-marijuana attitude
cannot be quite explained. Perhaps the government had more money to spend after
the oil-crisis and during the eighties for making anti-hemp propaganda. This
would correlate with the following recession in the nineties, in which this
attitude is somewhat less common.

4. Conclusion

There is no evident trend towards legalization of victimless crimes. The
attitudes towards victimless crimes differ on each subject, so there seems
to be no coherent view of that matter among the citizens. So we have

  • People view different victimless crimes not as victimless crimes,
    but as entirely different crimes and handle them as such, based
    on their cultural and historic background.
  • The attitude towards specific victimless crimes varies extremely with
    time.
  • The time seems to be a much more important factor on attitude than
    the age is.

This states effectively, that my assumption on the trend I’ve made at the
beginning is true. There is no evident trend in the attitude towards victimless
crimes in general. Time being obviously an important factor, can now be
leading to another questions. Why is there such an immense variation in time?
Is this somehow interconnected to a yet unknown variable like economy? And
why do the attitudes towards victimless crimes not have a similar progression?
And on the socio-psychological base, has society probably more influence on a
person than its youth has?

I close this file now, leaving more new questions open than I answered.

Peter Keel

Footnotes

[*]

We should see that this gives material to lots of discussions
whether someone else gets hurt by some special action or not. There is, for
instance, an ongoing discussion on the topic of what makes a human a human,
and at which point abortion therefore should be disallowed.

[**]

There is also the contrary of victimless crimes, that is,
legal actions which have victims. An example of this might be the destruction
and pollution of our environment, which is mostly legal but which inflicts us
all.

[***]

Some US-American specialities:
Looking at the data [4] I have present, I realize that this
presumably would not fit European countries. The American society seems to be
more strict and more un-enlightened than European countries. For instance if we
look on Table 2.60: 50.8% think that the most important purpose
on sentencing is to give criminals what they deserve, only 19.8% think this
should serve to educate and counsel offenders. Or on Table 2.72 we see that
74% of the American support death penalty, only 20% oppose it, despite the
fact that death penalty cannot be proved to be a measure to minimize violent
crimes. This gives some general assessment on American society.

[****]

There is very little information available on the
internet concerning Europe. While I was able to find immense resources
of statistical data for the USA, the rest of the world remains in the dark.
Also, much more data than I actually could get is available in databases
I had no access to. It either would cost money to access it, or to make
them send the information on discs. This applies for instance to the
swiss Bundesamt für Statistik. In this case, the information on paper
is actually free of charge, but the machine-readable version is not.


Bibliography

[1]Schur, Edwin M.Crimes Without Victims. © 1995, Prentice Hall, Inc.

[2]Wilkins, Leslie T. Social Deviance. © 1963, Tavistock Publications;
Electronic version © 1995, Harrow and Heston, Publishers; Internet
WWW-Page at URL:
https://www.scj.albany.edu/wilkins/SD000000.HTM

[3] Mill, John Stuart On Liberty, London, 1859
Internet Gopher at URL:
gopher://wiretap.spies.com/11/Library/Classic/liberty.jsm

[4] Utilization of Criminal Justice Statistics Project,
Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1995, Hindelang
Criminal Justice Research Center, University of Albany, 1995
Internet WWW-Page at URL:
https://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/

[5] Soapbox Magazine, Issue 2, February 1993
Internet posting to alt.censorship by
(cskelton.0inw@realm.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca) on 30 March 1993

[6] Reiman, Jeffrey H. Prostitution, Addiction and the Ideology of
Liberalism
, in Contemporary Crisis, Issue 3 (January 1979),
pp. 53-67. © by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.


Done in

1996-01-24

by Peter Keel (seegras@discordia.ch)

On Anarchy

Wednesday, June 1st, 1994

On Anarchy


Love Thy Neighbour

Everywhere in we hear the word anarchy. There
are anarchy-nets, anarchy-fileareas, anarchy-conferences, anarchy
-this and anarchy -thats. But what the hell IS anarchy really?
Does it mean to spread chaos, to bomb what you want, to harass
your neighbour? No this might be CHAOS, but not anarchy. Anarchy
simply means ‘a state with no gouvernment and no law’. This means
that chaotic states like a civil war might NEVER be considered as
anarchic, because there are in fact A LOT of little hierarchical
organized groups. No matter how many leaders there are, no matter
if everyone of them is in war with the others – this is chaos, but
NEVER anarchy. As long there is ANY leader it is not anarchy. What
consequencies does this have on anarchy? Well, it’s neither chaos
(because if everyone would do as he would like without taking care
for others, there soon would be some leaders) nor its war – you
cannot make a war without leaders, nor is it law-and-order. So
Anarchy CAN only be peaceful. Anarchy has no government and no
law, which does NOT mean that there must be chaos. In fact, in an
anarchy exists some ORDER. But this order is made by the people,
not by any government, and the people themselves can change this
order whenever they like. An anarchy is very flexible through
this. In an anarchy, decisions are made by people, but whoever can
not cope with those decisions has the right not to care for these.
Anarchy is the MOST difficult idea of social grouping. It needs
from everyone a very big self-responsibility, otherwise the
anarchy won’t work. You have to care very much for the others,
but you are not supposed to. You are free. This is very difficult.
But if you have a certain self-responsibility, you will do what is
needed, you will help others

Anarchy will work

Anarchy _ONLY_ can work if everyone in the anarchy is anarchist,
which means he has a certain interest in keeping the anarchy going
and a great responsibility and conscience. If everyone loves each
other, there is no problem, you’ve got the anarchy. I myself know
people, very good friends of mine, anarchists with whose one could
really build an anarchy. And in history, there is proof enough,
that anarchy has worked. Several small groups, isolated, on
islands, have developped anarchies. They have been destroyed
through other states, monarchies, the roman empire and so on. But
we can learn from them, that anarchies do function with little
groups up to some thousand people. By the way, a true democracy or
communism functions only with some thousand people too, otherwise
the money, lobbies and the like will change those systems. WE HERE
IN SWITZERLAND GOT _NO_ TRUE DEMOCRACY. This does not work with 6
Million people, just as an anarchy does presumably not with such a
lot of people.

Anarchy will not work

Yes, as long we do not love each other, as long as we are not all
anarchists, it will not work. This is too bad, but better than to
betray oneselves, as demoracies do. Anarchy will not work with
big amounts of people too, that would be illusionary.

Anarchy, why else?

I will not try to create an anarchy. I think I never will do that
nevertheless I am an anarchist. Why? I think anarchy is a goal
that is _SUCH_ high it can not be achieved. But what counts is the
trend, the development to the direction of an anarchy. I have
anarchy as a picture in my mind as a model how it should be. I try
to go in that direction – self-responsibility, as much personal
freedom which is possible, peace, love.

I think this is what counts.

Peter Keel,

1994-06-01