Bruce E. Levine, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has been in practice for more than two decades.
Levine's most recent book is Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007), which argues that by not seriously confronting societal sources of depression, American mental health institutions have become part of the problem rather than the solution. The book provides an alternate approach that encompasses the whole of our humanity, society, and culture, and which redefines depression (as a problematic strategy to shut down pain) in a way that makes enduring transformation more likely.
Levine is also the author of Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations and a World Gone Crazy (New York-London: Continuum, 2003), a protest book. The 26 alphabetically ordered chapters of Commonsense Rebellion detail Levine's contention that the high national rates of mental illness in the United States are really just natural reactions (e.g., discontent and disconnectedness) to the oppression of what he terms an "institutional society," which he argues causes many to break down psychologically. An earlier edition was released in 2001 with the subtitle Debunking Psychiatry, Confronting Society — An A to Z Guide to Rehumanizing Our Lives.
Levine is a regular contributor to Z Magazine and The Huffington Post and his articles have appeared in Adbusters, The Ecologist and many other publications. His website is www.brucelevine.net
Dr. Levine is a member of MindFreedom International, and on the Advisory Council of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP).
Robbert(Rop)Gonggrijp (born 1968 in Amsterdam) is a hacker and one of the founders of the internet service provider XS4ALL.
While growing up in Wormer in the Dutch Zaanstreek area, he became known as a teenage hacker and appeared as one of the main characters in Jan Jacobs's book "Kraken en Computers" ("Hacking and computers", Veen uitgevers 1985) which describes the early hacker scene in The Netherlands. Moved to Amsterdam in 1988. Founded the hacker magazine Hack-Tic in 1989. Was believed to be a major security threat by authorities in The Netherlands as well as in the USA. In the masthead of Hack-Tic, Gonggrijp described his role as hoofdverdachte ('prime suspect'). He was convinced that the Internet would radically alter society.
In 1993, a number of people surrounding Hack-Tic including Gonggrijp founded XS4ALL. It was the first ISP that offered access to the Internet for private individuals in the Netherlands. Gonggrijp sold the company to the former enemy Dutch-Telecom KPN in 1997. After he left XS4ALL, Gonggrijp founded ITSX, a computer security evaluation company, which was bought by Madison Gurkha in 2006. In 2001, Gonggrijp started work on the Cryptophone, a mobile telephone that can encrypt conversations.[3]
Since 1989, Gonggrijp has been the main organizer of hacker events held every four years. Originally organized by the cast of Hack-Tic, these events have continued to live to this day.
Throughout the years, he has repeatedly shown his concerns about the increasing amount of information on individuals that government agencies and companies have access to. Rop held a controversial talk titled "We lost the war"[4] at the Chaos Communication Congress 2005 in Berlin together with Frank Rieger.[5]
In 2006 he founded the organization "Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet" ("We do not trust voting computers") which campaigns against the use of electronic voting systems without a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail and which showed in October 2006 on Dutch television how an electronic voting machine from manufacturer Nedap could easily be hacked.[6]
On May 16, 2008 the Dutch government decided that elections in the Netherlands will be held using paper ballots and red pencil only. A proposal to develop a new generation of voting computers was rejected.
Gonggrijp has worked for whistleblowing site Wikileaks, helping to prepare their April 2010 release of video footage from the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike.
On December 14 of 2010, in relation to ongoing investigations of WikiLeaks, the US Department of Justice issued a subpoena ordering Twitter to release information regarding Gonggrijp's account as well as those of Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Birgitta Jónsdóttir and Jacob Appelbaum. The reason is Gonggrijp's collaboration in releasing the “Collateral Murder” video in april of 2010, a WikiLeaks action.
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