I

know the harm that solitary confinement causes to people. I was once the wife

of someone who spent two and a half years in solitary confinement. Timothy

Leary was a political scapegoat, like Julian Assange. His crime was

broadcasting to people that no one had the right to prevent others from

altering their consciousness. This happened at a time when the pressure cooker

of the 50's "Mad Men" thinking had exploded into a great call for freedom.

Timothy Leary was imprisoned on a charge of possession of 0.01 grams of

marijuana.

Timothy, like Julian Assange, was tortured, and by

that I mean solitary confinement in one of the hardest prisons in California,

in the cell next to Charles Manson, a serial killer. His table and chair were

bolted to the floor and a 20-watt lamp burned day and night. No right to books

or any kind of media. One of the only books that reached him was " The Gulag

Archipelago" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Julian Assange is called "a rapist."

Timothy was called the most dangerous man in America, a title he most

ironically shared with Daniel Ellsberg. It was also said the he killed more

people than the Vietnam War, with his slogan, "turn on, tune in, drop out." I

thought a lot about Assange during those ten days he was in solitary

confinement, held in Victorian conditions, like Timothy Leary, for his own

protection!

Timothy said in 1984 that the computer

revolution would free the world. He said that the power of computers would be

the next escalation of the sixties creative rebellion. He compared the Internet

to the network of synapses in the human brain.

Timothy Leary was disgraced, ridiculed and tortured, named by

a Senate Subcommittee an "Ideological Trafficker." Vice President Joe Biden

called Julian Assange a " High Tech Terrorist." I tremble as the long arm of

empire conspires to stop Wikileaks from informing "the people" of the strange

and erratic machinations of those who are supposed to be servants of the

people. Those in power are practiced at pushing Humpty Dumpty off the wall.

When Nixon needed a law and order front page, a

few days before his second inauguration, the CIA was waiting for us at Kabul

Airport, where they kidnapped Timothy and I. After four days of detaining us in

the filthiest conditions, they returned us to the United States from a country,

Afghanistan, that had no extradition treaty with the US. I had committed no

crime in any country of the world, and still have never been arrested to this day.

The shock of having been escorted half way around the world by heavily armed

men, forty hours without sleep, and seeing my lover dragged away to prison still

lingers till this day. This was just the beginning of an ordeal that lasted three

and a half years, during which I visited Timothy in 26 different prisons and

jails. For good measure the government even planted rumors that said that I had

given them Timothy's whereabouts so that he could be busted. This turned the

counterculture against me. People in power are very good at playing the divide

to conquer game.

I have given many hours to reading the news

about Wikileaks online. Government does not care about us. Big business does

not care about us. We need to care about each other, this is the true

revolution and it has far reaching implications.

Thanks to Julian Assange and his collaborators,

the tide is turning faster.

In my view this is the blossoming of a peaceful

rebellion that started long ago, a revolution of the heart, the mind, a subtle

transformation of consciousness, many of us know now that our species is one

body interdependent with all other life on the planet.

When Timothy was in solitary confinement and

later classified insane by the government, he was transferred to a medical

facility prison in Northern California. This move was a further effort by his

captors to break his spirit. During our weekly visits he said true change

would come from "No more Secrets." Secrecy leads to blackmail and "Dirty

Tricks" are carried out in the dark.

Berthold Brecht, the Austrian playwright and

poet, wrote in 1933: "It's not

the people who have to change; it's the context in which they make their

decisions."

Those in absolute

power have built greater and greater walls of secrecy around their context

since the 1970's. Since then, many of us have been expanding our awareness and

in so doing dissolving the boundaries, borders and separation that are enforced

by a culture of secrets.

We are all Wikileaks and when Julian Assange is attacked without

been charged, tried and convicted we are all Julian Assange, all angels and

rogues wrapped up in one living, breathing organism. No more family secrets, they are the backbone of the

patriarchal society, no more State Secrets, they enforce the power of

hierarchy. We are each other's national security, we are each others safe

harbors, my heart is your country.

Join me in supporting Julian Assange not as a hero or villain but

as a small piece of our collective transparency of love.

–Santa Fe, December 23, 2010

Joanna Harcourt Smith is the producer and interviewer of the podcasting

website futureprimitive.org.