The citizen's petition to Cancel RIMPAC has individual signatures and organizational endorsers from around the world.
NATO Becoming a Pacific Military Force
This year's RIMPAC includes military forces from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Forty percent of RIMPAC participants are either in NATO or have NATO ties. Six of the 26 RIMPAC countries are members of the NATO - Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, while four other participating countries are Asia-Pacific "partners" of NATO - Australia, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand.
NATO military exercises throughout Europe, particularly on the border with Russia, and the U.S. never-ending discussion about Ukraine's possible membership in NATO (the door is never closed), were two major red lines the Russian government used to justify its war on Ukraine.
In the Pacific, NATO forces coming into the region greatly increase the tension with China and North Korea.
Marine Mammals Endangered
Military naval events both in practice and in war are dangerous for humans " and for marine mammals. The Russian-Ukrainian war is the most recent example. Scores of dolphins have turned up dead on the coasts of the Black Sea from that war.
Research scientists suggest that dolphins may be dying in the Black Sea due to a large presence of Russian warships and Ukrainian responses to those ships disrupting the dolphins' communication pattern.
The "intense ship noise and low-frequency sonars" interfere with the dolphins' main means of communication. Disruptive underwater noises may either have them end up losing their way in large fishing nets or around the Black Sea shores."
According to a report by The Guardian, researchers believe that heightened noise pollution in the northern Black Sea caused by around 20 Russian navy vessels and ongoing military activities might have driven the dolphins south to the Turkish and Bulgarian coasts.
The Turkish Marine Research Foundation (TÃ?DAV) announced recently that more than 80 dolphins were found dead across the country's western Black Sea coast, "an extraordinary increase" in the number of marine mammals found dead in a typical year. A recent video from the Black Sea documents some of the 80 dead dolphins.
Several studies in the past have confirmed that military sonars are harmful to marine life and many militaries have adopted mitigating measures to protect wildlife. Whales and dolphins have been killed in U.S. military war exercises by sonar and bombs.
In March 2000, the U.S. Navy admitted that its use of a high-intensity sonar system caused 16 beaked and minke whales to be stranded on beaches in the Bahamas shortly after U.S. Navy ships using high-intensity sonar had passed by. Six of the whales died and autopsies on the mammals revealed bleeding around the whales' inner ears and in one instance in the brain.
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