The U.S. Navy has intercepted, disabled, and taken possession of Iranian cargo ship Touska

 

JMIC update 034 for the Middle East maritime region shows Strait of Hormuz combined cargo and tanker transits averaging 7.5 vessels per day April 12-18 vs. 138 normally

 But tankers exiting the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz average just 2 per day April 12-18.

After the 13th, just 10 tankers have exited over 5 days, also 2 per day. 

Tankers transiting the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait to and from the Red Sea, whether northwest (3.5/day) and possibly through the Suez or southeast (4/day) and headed to East Asia, average 7.5 per day.

Suezmax tankers carrying up to 1 million barrels of oil are the largest which can pass fully laden through the Suez.

Before the war, a dozen or so VLCCs, which have a capacity of 2 million barrels, transited the Strait of Hormuz daily out of 65-70 tankers which did so.

Total SoH tanker exits daily used to average 25-30.

Yanbu on the Red Sea can fill 2-5 tankers daily depending on the size (maybe 4 Suezmax), plus 2 per day out of the Persian Gulf, so we are at the max operating at 23% of normal tanker exits in the last week (7/30).

And again, that's just tankers, not a statement of actual oil volume.

And which of these were stopped by the U.S. Navy after transit only the Navy knows, as do people whose full time job it is to know, which isn't me. 

If Monday pays attention to reality, oil prices will rise. 

 

Ronald Reagan's goal of a 600-ship U.S. Navy made it to 594 in 1987, but in 2026 we can barely deploy 300 because of Bill Clinton, but Trumpty Dumpty never mentions that

 

 After the end of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, Bill Clinton gutted the Navy.

We went from 541 ships in 1992 to 336 by 1999.

And now we can't stop the Houthis in the Red Sea, nor Iran in the Persian Gulf. 

The dumbasses at Fox don't know the meaning of decimates, showcase an NSC liar THIS MORNING who says U.S. Navy escorted ships through Hormuz yesterday when they did not

To be fair, they're just repeating what our ignoramus in chief says.

 

Because we can't build them ourselves

 

Hanwha Ocean shares jump 10% after Trump says South Korean firm to build warships for U.S. Navy

 

Manufacturing capacity utilization was down in November, a pale reflection of its former self before globalization.

 

Same with manufacturing employment.

 

Manufacturing production was barely up in November and is effectively flat since the Great Recession, before which it was still rising.

 

Trump stupidly thinks tariffs can reverse all this, when you're supposed to use tariffs to protect what you have, not what you don't.

 

 

The US Navy is obeying illegal orders to delete video evidence of the October 17 boat strike survivors

 

San Francisco Health Department finds out in October 2025 that the U.S. Navy discovered Plutonium 239 at the decommissioned and partly inhabited Hunters Point Naval Shipyard last November

 ... The plutonium levels were more than double the Environmental Protection Agency’s “action level,” when further steps must be taken to ensure public safety, according to the letter. ...

The story is here. 

 

As Mad King Ludwig speeds a carrier strike group from the Med to the Caribbean, American failure to restore freedom of navigation in the Red Sea is highlighted by the latest Suez Canal navigation report for 3Q2025

 It's a picture of dismal failure.

The U.S. Navy has not made the Red Sea safe for free trade.

The Houthis remain a potent threat to shipping. 

3Q2025 statistics compared with 3Q2023 show the number of ships transiting the Suez Canal down 49.8%.

Net tons passing through is down 65.8%.

 

 

Will Trump be tried for murdering drug traffickers like former Philippine president Duterte is being tried?

 

... Duterte was arrested in March by Philippine authorities on a warrant issued by the ICC. He is now being held at an ICC facility in the Netherlands.

Supporters of Duterte criticized the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Duterte's political rival, for arresting and surrendering the former leader to a court whose jurisdiction his supporters dispute. ...

More. 

I suppose it depends on a future president giving Trump up to arrest by the International Criminal Court somehow.

... The strikes on Venezuelan narcoterror smuggling boats provide one possible avenue. Shortly after the U.S. Navy destroyed the first such vessel, Ken Roth, a former head of Human Rights Watch, endorsed ICC intervention. “Trump just did what the International Criminal Court has charged former Philippines Pres. Duterte with doing—ordering the summary execution of alleged drug traffickers,” Mr. Roth tweeted. Venezuela is a Rome Statute party, which in the court’s thinking gives it jurisdiction over U.S. officials and servicemen involved in the attacks. The ICC has already launched an investigation against a nonmember state (Israel) based on a single boarding of a vessel flagged by a member state, so it has all the precedents it needs.

Mr. Trump has thus far taken an incremental approach to the ICC. He revived a first-term executive order authorizing sanctions against the court and applied it against four ICC officials. None of this has significantly reduced the risk to the U.S. or led the ICC to change its ways.

The ICC’s supporters don’t see the existing sanctions as an “existential threat.” The tribunal can easily ride it out by lying low until a Democratic president lifts the sanctions, as Joe Biden did. The court takes a long view—its prosecutors and judges have nine-year terms, and its other staffers are part of a global deep state who can expect to remain at their jobs indefinitely.

International lawyers are already developing multiple lines of attack against the administration and its officials. ...

More.

A week before the 60-day War Powers Act deadline, the Houthis conveniently cry uncle and pledge to halt attacks on US naval forces and Red Sea shipping

 

Israel wipes out the Houthi airport, fuel supplies, and concrete factory and then they finally cry uncle? 

Something doesn't add up here.

Trump announces US will stop bombing Houthis 

... Trump, ahead of a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, said the halt would start immediately. The Houthis approached the administration on Monday night indicating “they want to stop the fighting,” he said. ...

Israel escalated strikes against the Houthis on Monday night with 20 fighter jets bombing the rebel-held port city of Hodeidah. Israeli forces were responding to a ballistic missile strike against the Jerusalem airport by the group. The Trump administration also labeled the Houthis a terror group in March, changing a Biden-era policy. ... Houthi strikes against the waterway have declined significantly in recent months, and the group hasn’t targeted a commercial vessel since late December. ... 

Israel's military says it has fully disabled Yemen's main airport with strikes... 

... “We indirectly informed the Americans that the continued escalation will affect the criminal Trump’s visit to the region, and we have not informed them of anything else,” said Mahdi al-Mashat, head of the Houthi’s supreme political council, in a statement carried by the rebel-controlled SABA news agency early Wednesday. Trump is due to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates next week. ...

The US Navy lost an F/A-18 and its tractor off the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier evading a Houthi missile in the Red Sea yesterday according to reports, but that's not the real story

This story, for example, says nothing about evading a Houthi missile.

Fighter jet slips off carrier hangar deck in Red Sea, one minor injury

 

And is this even the Truman?

I mean, that's an F-35 going in the drink, not the same jet.

You can't trust anybody these days apparently.

Danish harbor master claims to have discovered US Navy ships with transponders turned off in vicinity of Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022 just before the sabotage

 

Bill Gertz: US speeds up development of new, lighter W93 warhead for US Navy's new Columbia class boomers to help counter Chicoms' new ICBM fields

 The story is here.

Danish shipper Maersk suspended Red Sea transit for 48 hours after late Saturday Houthi attack, U.S. Navy claims 1,200 safe transits in the last 10 days

 From the story here:

The events surrounding the Maersk Hangzhou represented the 23rd illegal attack by the Houthis on international shipping since Nov. 19, the Central Command said. It was the first time the U.S. Navy said its personnel had killed Houthi fighters since the Red Sea attacks started. ...

Since the Pentagon announced Operation Prosperity Guardian to counter the attacks just over 10 days ago, 1,200 merchant ships have traveled through the Red Sea region, and none had been hit by drone or missile strikes, Vice Adm. Brad Cooper told The Associated Press in an interview on Saturday.

OK John

 US NAVY SINKS 3 HOUTHI BOATS
DEFENDS RED SEA MERCHANT SHIP :

The U.S. does not seek to escalate the conflict, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on "Good Morning America" on Sunday.

"We don't seek a conflict wider in the region and we're not looking for a conflict with the Houthis," Kirby told ABC News' Whit Johnson. "The best outcome here would be for the Houthis to stop these attacks as we have made clear over and over again."

Your US Navy's idea of the crack team needed for the next Hunt For The Red October

 

Fort Worth Star-Telegram publishes pure coronavirus porn about Starr County, Texas

Texas has 250 counties.

Starr County is next door to hard-hit Hidalgo County.

For "daily new cases" in the 7-day, 14-day, 30-day, 90-day and since the beginning of the pandemic, Hidalgo ranks 4th, 5th, 5th, 6th and 6th.

For "daily new deaths" Hidalgo ranks 1st, 1st, 1st, 3rd and 3rd.

Starr County?

Daily new cases: 29th, 34th, 31st, 34th and 34th.

Daily new deaths: 16th, 19th, 27th, 33rd and 36th.

Hidalgo's had 14,529 cases to date, and 433 deaths.

Starr County? 1,519 cases to date, and . . . 20 deaths.

Twenty! Since the beginning!

Yet here's the headline from the geniuses at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

COVID-19 patients will be ‘sent home to die’ if deemed too sick, Texas county says

BY CHACOUR KOOP

I don't know what's worse, that the newspaper actually published this drivel, the money line of which is that "On Sunday, Gov.Abbott announced U.S. Navy teams will go to South Texas to provide medical assistance, including the hospital in Starr County", or that Drudge put this fourth in his lineup this morning.

The hysteria mongers never stop.

Gramps, born in 1926, says this is worse than 2008

Dad will be 94 this year if the coronavirus doesn't get him first.

He's been through a lot, seen it all. Darmouth graduate. Served in the US Navy from World War II to Vietnam, retired as a captain.

He was just a little kid during the Great Depression, didn't really know any better. But he's watched America become a lot better since then, and now it suddenly isn't.

Things may end for Dad the way they began, with Great Depression II.

Long war on terror, coronavirus, economic meltdown.

We've had war, plague and depression before in this country, sometimes in rapid succession. WWI ended with a whimper as the Spanish Flu pandemic killed tens of millions, followed quickly by the depression of 1920. That one was very deep and severe, but ended quickly because the government . . . did nothing.

Free market economies, if left to be free, quickly recover from catastrophes because debt overhangs are allowed to clear through bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is the cure.

But we can't stomach that, same as we haven't been able to say No to our children. Self-esteem and all that.

So, expect the suffering and disorder to continue.

Sad. 

US Naval War College professor who teaches our officer corps: Trump is worse than dyed in the wool communist Bernie Sanders

NeverTrump Tom Nichols has to vote socialist in order to save the free market system

US Naval War College professor upset about the exercise of raw political power at the same time upset candidate Trump didn't do more to stop Russkies from interfering in his election.  Like the US Navy takes orders from unelected politicians.