AUT: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: .

[NoFlyby Action Site <noflyby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

UN PRESS CONFERENCE ON THE UNDERMINING OF THE OUTER SPACE TREATY BY
GOVERNMENTS' PLANS TO WEAPONIZE AND NULCEARIZE OUTER SPACE

UN PRESS CLUB: Thursday, October 15, 1998, 2:00 P.M. to 3:00 P.M.


Speakers:

        Alyn Ware: Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

        Joseph Mangano: Author of "Low-level Radiation and Immune System
Damage: An Atomic Era Legacy"; 1998

        Karl Grossman: Professor of Journalism, State University of NY;
author of "The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat to Life";
1997

Moderator

        Tina Bell: Coordinator, Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom (NY)


New York City - You are invited to attend a press conference at the United
Nations Thursday, October 15, 1998, 2-3 pm. This conference is to help alert
the press and public to Governments' actions that undermine the Outer Space
Treaty, 1967, and other related treaties, including the Anti Ballistic
Missile Treaty. The U.S. Space Command has stated in its "Vision for 2020"
that it is "dominating the space dimensions of military operations  . . .
integrating Space Forces into war fighting."

The press conference is being held on October 15, exactly one year after
NASA in cooperation with the European Space Agency, launched the Cassini
space probe (using a Titan IV rocket), carrying 72.3 pounds of plutonium.
Cassini is still scheduled to flyby Earth on August 18, 1999 even though the
Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Panel found that Cassini's plutonium
containers were not designed to withstand the heat of atmospheric reentry,
and reentry occurred, 9 kgs of plutonium could be released. The panel also
noted that a complete burn-up of the space craft could cause "several tens
of thousands" of fatal lung cancers, which independent doctors and
scientists' claim are understating the risk. In the Cassini Earth Swingby
Report, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory has listed 18 different kinds of
failures that might send the space probe out of control. One of these is an
electronic failure similar to the kind that caused a Titan IV rocket to
explode at take off on August 12, 1998.

Although the 1997 UN resolution GA 52/37 calls for the reestablishment of
the Ad Hoc Committee on the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space
(PAROS), this has not occurred. At the UN Conference on Disarmament on
August 13, 1998, China stated that "immediate action should be taken to
prevent weaponization of outer space and to ban the test deployment and use
of any weapon systems in outer space prohibit the utilization of outer space
for striking ground targets. " Come and learn about stopping the dangerous
nuclearization and weaponization of outer space.
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UN PASSES MUST BE OBTAINED - CALL ASAP WILPF (NY) (212)533-2125
Organized by: Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (NY)


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