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“After burning our draft cards outside Mr. Holt’s home, an interviewer asked: ‘So you think you know more than the politicians, do you?’
“Our answer was: ‘YES’.”
Draft card burner, Mr. Andrew Blunden, said this at last week’s Youth Campaign Against Conscription rally at Melbourne Town Hall.
photo of Andy
ANDREW BLUNDEN
He burnt his card ...
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With fellow 20-year-olds, Lew Testro and Alan Ross, Mr. Blunden earlier this year was fined for his failure “to produce his registration card for national service.”
He told the Town Hall meeting: “Because Prime Minister Holt believes that an idea that exists in Vietnam may be destroyed by killing those who might hold the idea, as Romans believed Christianity could be killed by killing Christians, conscripts are supposed to assist in the alienation of Australia from the up-and-coming nations in the name of patriotism!”
Mr. Blunden said he was a pacifist. He said that opposition to the Vietnam war in particular was by no means essential to the issue of conscription.
Nevertheless, he described in detail how U.S. policy in Vietnam is in flagrant violation of the Geneva Agreement of 1954.
“Holt’s role like Mussolini’s”
“By following America into Vietnam, Holt’s Australia is playing the role of Mussolini’s Italy,” he said.
Urging other youths facing the call-up to burn their draft cards too, Mr. Blunden said:
“Protest does achieve results.
“An elected government is sensitive to public opinion.
“Protest is the strongest means of demonstrating public opinion with the possible exception of a referendum.”
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