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, a political and defense mobilization group that supports Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, democracy and transparency in government, is promoting an open letter printed below. The letter was started by Linda Schade and Kevin Zeese, past and current executive directors of .

The letter has been signed by many prominent figures, including radical writers Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, William Blum, Naomi Wolf, Jeffrey St Claire and Chris Hedges. It has been signed by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who released the “Pentagon Papers” during the Vietnam War, and Bradley Manning, a US soldier in jail facing charges for allegedly downloading classified documents exposing US war crimes.

To ad your name, visit www.wikileaksisdemocracy.org.

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We, the undersigned, stand in defense of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and their actions to safeguard and advance democracy, transparency and government accountability, as protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Wikileaks performs an invaluable service to the broad U.S. and global public with a commitment to the protection of human rights and the rule of law. Government representatives have issued serious and unjustified threats against Mr. Assange and his non-profit media organization which serve only to maintain a cloak of secrecy around high crimes and violations of international law, including torture, tampering with democratically elected governments, illegal bombings and wars, surveillance, mass slaughter of innocent civilians and more.

We call on all governments, organizations, and individuals of conscience forcefully to condemn and reject all U.S. efforts to fraudulently criminalize the legitimate journalism of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and related efforts to expose an increasingly lawless U.S. government to the indispensable democratic requirement of public scrutiny. True or false, any charges which the Swedish government may pursue are irrelevant to the primacy of an independent free press.

Journalists should not be made into criminals for publishing materials critical of the government. Therefore, we reject any efforts to extradite Julian Assange to the United States or allied client states in relation to these matters. We condemn and reject every incitement to murder, incarcerate or in any way harm Mr. Assange. We encourage all those with information on corruption and violations of law to take courage from the example of Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks by acting to expose all such information into the light of public and judicial review.