How The United States Got More Than Even With Iran Over The Hostage Crisis.

The Iranian hostage crisis began on November 4, 1979. Radical Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held captive 52 U.S. hostages until January 20th, 1981, which was the day that President Reagan was sworn into office for his first term. Ever since that crisis there are some Americans that seen unaware of exactly how the U.S. went about punishing the Iranians for their actions. Briefly, here is how The U.S. did it.
The U.S. reacted to the crisis by freezing billions of dollars of Iranian assets that resided in western banks. The executive order was signed by President Jimmy Carter days after the start of the crisis. That was the American first step. These assets total about 12 billion dollars today and are only now about to be released finally to the Iranian government but not all in one big piece at the same time.
The U.S. has denied these funds to Iran for 37 years and it is money than Iran could desperately use.
The second, and certainly more damaging, reaction that the U.S. had was to support Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. The Iran-Iraq war began in September of 1980, less than a year after the Hostage crisis began, and lasted until August of 1988. During the conflict The United States supported the war efforts of Saddam Hussein and the results for Iran were harsh. Some estimates place the number of Iranian war dead at anywhere between 400,000 to 800,000 but I have seen estimates that claim the number to be over 1 million. These estimates are just war dead and do not include the additional hundreds of thousands that were wounded.
As far as economic losses for Iran related to the war, most estimates place that number at or around 600 billion. Some other estimates place it even higher.
Some Americans have lamented for decades about the Iranian hostage crisis believing that Iran got the better of the U.S. and that we never properly responded to Iran or ever "Got Even" with them for what it was that they did. The truth is The U.S. got more than even with Iran over the hostage crisis many moons ago.

How Mercury Gets Into Your Tuna Fish

   Every time you go to your local grocery store or supermarket and reach for a can of tuna fish you are not just getting the tuna that is in the can but also a chemical that if ingested in sufficient quantities could be fatal.

That chemical of course is Mercury. Have you ever wondered how it is that it gets into your tuna fish in the first place?

The first step in the process is a product of industry. All the emissions from all the factories from all the companies that are either manufacturing something or refining something contribute to the cause.

The thousands of factories both nationwide and worldwide that have giant smoke stacks that rise high into the sky and release tons and tons of waste product from their manufacturing process. The thick smoke from these factories is released into the atmosphere where it rises into the sky and just drifts for miles on the natural air currents. Some of it carries over the oceans of the World. Once this toxic soot is over the oceans the next step in the process involves rain.

When it rains the droplets of water will fall from the clouds and will hit this toxic soot and become a mix of water and chemicals which will fall into the ocean. Once it is in the ocean it is ingested by the fish that are there. Then come the large fishing boats to scoop up all the fish in their nets and take them back to a factory to can them. The canned fish are then loaded on to trucks and delivered to your local grocery store where they are stacked on the shelves and available for sale.

It is not just Mercury that exists in these worldwide clouds of soot that are injected into the atmosphere by industrialization. There are thousands of chemicals. None of which are particularly healthy for humans beings. The atmosphere of the Earth is a self contained Eco system that is continually being polluted. What is described here is just one of the many adverse effects.

The U.S. Military Today

Many People know that the U.S. military is currently deployed in countless places around the world today. Few Americans know exactly how large the U.S. armed forces are and what the breakdown is of those who now serve. How many soldiers are in the U.S. military today? How many women serve? How old are they on average? Here is a quick look at some of the details. The U.S. armed forces are currently 86% male and 14% female. Current troop strength is 1,447,000. This is down from 2,065,000 in 1990. 53% of those serving are married. This is up from 40% in 1972. 45% of the enlisted are between the ages of 18-25. 21% are between the ages of 26-30. 13% are between ages 31-35. 11% are between 36-40. 10% are over 40 years old.
The decline in troop strength from over two million in 1990 to the current about 1.5 million is due in large part to the famous "Peace Dividend" that many Americans have been hearing about for about twenty years. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 it was thought that the United States did not need to maintain such a large military force any longer and so it was reduced in numbers during the Clinton administration in order to save money and help balance the U.S. budget. The move worked and without any real sacrifice to the quality of the fighting force. President Clinton left office in 2001 with not only a balanced fiscal budget but a surplus in fact.

How Fast Is The World's Population Growing?

Unless you have been living under a rock someplace you already know that the world is in the midst of a population explosion. The number of human beings on this planet has increased alarmingly. So too are the worries from government officials all around the world about how much of a strain that is going to take on the planet's food and water resources, which are already strained in some areas. Just how quickly has the world's population increased? Here is a small chart that tracks the progress over the last two hundred years:

1805 - The World reaches 1 billion human inhabitants.

1927 - 2 billion reached.

1960 - 3 billion

1974 - 4 billion

1987 - 5 billion

1999 - 6 billion

2011 - 7 billion

Tons Of Trash From Japanese Tsunami Headed For U.S.

The Earthquake and subsequent Tsunami that hit Fukushima, Japan on March 11th, 2011 was devastating in many ways. For Japan itself it resulted in 15,000 dead, over 130,000 forced from their homes, and countless billions in damage, which will take years to repair, and not the least of which is an ongoing Nuclear disaster involving multiple power plants. As it turns out there will also be consequences for the west coast of the United States as well.
A giant mountain of debris from the Tsunami was swept out to sea and with it went millions of tons of trash and garbage that is now floating on the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Included in the debris fields are the remains of thousands of homes that were destroyed along with countless numbers of cars, boats, furniture, tv's, refrigerators, bottles and corks, and other assorted junk. The stuff is now floating in the middle of the Pacific where ocean currents are slowly drifting it towards the west coast of the United States. Some of the debris fields are reported to be larger than the size of the state of Texas. The debris has been spotted in the Pacific by fishing boats that have reported back what they have encountered. It is now causing problems for U.S. Naval ships at sea also because it is forcing them out of their usual shipping lanes in order to steer around the floating garbage to avoid potential damage to vessels. Some of the skins of modern day Navy ships are only about 2 inches thick and are not designed to be crashing into giant fields of metal junk in the middle of the ocean. It would be potentially millions of dollars in damage otherwise so that must be avoided.
Some of the stuff is expected to hit the Hawaiian Islands by as early as January 2012 and possibly hit the west coast of the U.S. by 2013.

FDR And His Secret Train Car

Not a lot of people know about it or have ever even heard about it. Underneath the Grand Central Terminal in New York City, just under the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel sits a long abandoned armored train car. It was built for the use of only one person, President Franklin Roosevelt.
It is something of a little known fact to many Americans today but back when FDR was President between 1933 - 1945 there were very few Americans then that knew about the fact that he suffered from Polio and he in fact was without the ability to walk or even stand on his own. His administration would go to great lengths to keep this fact a secret and did so in many ways. Often when FDR was seen standing with other officials to be photographed by the press he always had bulky leg braces on to keep him from collapsing in a heap to the floor. Very often there would be Secret Service agrents standing next to him on either side who would be holding on to the president to further prevent him from falling to the ground.
The most elaborate length that his government ever went to in order to prevent him from being seen unable to walk in public has got to be the construction of this rail car that now sits under the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. It was constructed with double wide doors that would be wide enough for his armored Pierce Arrow Limosine to be driven on board the car and then be able to drive off when they arrived in NYC without anyone ever having to witness FDR struggling to be removed from the car looking helpless. An elevator at the Hotel was even made extra wide in order to fit the whole car on to it and lift the President up to the ballroom of the Hotel where he would not be seen coming out of the car.
The train car was operated until FDR died in April of 1945. The car still remains there today at the Grand Central Terminal. The FDR museum is currently trying to raise the funds nessassery to have the train car moved and possibly in the future publicly displayed in some way as a piece of significant American history.

Space Junk In Earth Orbit Now Worse Than Ever

Officials at NASA now say that the amount of "Space Junk" that is in Earth's orbit is now greater than ever before. They are currently tracking about 22,000 pieces of space debris that they categorize as "big objects," which are pieces of space junk that are larger than about one half of an inch, and countless thousands of smaller objects that are less than one half of an inch in size.
Since 1957 when the Russians launched the first satellite "Sputnik" mankind has been littering the orbit of the Earth with bits and pieces of debris from rocket launches and satellite launches. Much of the stuff over time falls back into Earth's atmosphere and is burned away but some debris achieves too high an orbit in space for that to happen and so it just circles around the Earth for years causing a hazard for space missions and expensive communications satellites. Even the International Space Station from time to time has to adjust its orbit in order to avoid a tracked piece of space junk from hitting it and causing devastating damage.
The amount of space debris increased greatly in 2007 when the Chinese government conducted an anti satellite weapons test. The Chinese launched a missile into orbit to destroy an old weather satellite. When the missile hit its target it shattered it into an estimated 150,000 new pieces of space debris.