WHEN ORGANIZED CRIME CONNECTS TO TERROR: My latest Creators Syndicate column.

DO ECONOMIC SANCTIONS REALLY DAMAGE NORTH KOREA’S DICTATORSHIP?: According to a high level defector, they do.

“Economic sanctions, if continued, will erode the North Korean regime’s grip on power, create more opportunities for market activities and stir all kinds of corruption and disorder in the country,” said Ri Jong Ho in his first public interview since his defection in late 2014. “That loosening of government control will strike at the very foundation of the [top-down] leader-based system.”

Ri is a defector and a major defector. At one time he was in charge of overseeing North Korea’s economic production and trade. The VOA interview is his first public statement since he defected in 2014.

A MEXICAN CARTEL IS SHIPPING COCAINE THROUGH ARGENTINA: At least that’s what Argentine police say. A lot of cocaine.

SYRIA PLANNING A NEW CHEMICAL ATTACK?: The White House says it has intelligence suggesting that the Assad regime may be preparing to launch a new attack using chemical weapons.

…the activities resembled preparations for an April chemical weapons attack that was blamed on Damascus.

“As we have previously stated, the United States is in Syria to eliminate the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” Spicer concluded. “If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”

The announcement tells Assad we’re watching.

SERIAL JOB KILLER STRIKES AGAIN: The minimum wage. It’s a serial killer.

Working from the absurd idea that if higher wages are good for individual workers, it must be socially beneficial to have government order all employers to pay their workers more, progressives and other leftists have had extraordinary success in forcing small businesses to pay higher minimum wages.

Big Mac’s stock is up 27% this year. Why? Pushed by concerns over a rising minimum wage, the fast-food chain is replacing human cashiers as fast as it can. But it really has no choice.

By the end of 2017, it plans to have digital cashiers in 2,500 restaurants; by 2018, another 3,000 restaurants will go digital. They’re also going to let you order via mobile device at 14,000 restaurants by year end. McDonald’s calls it the “Experience of the Future” strategy.

Somewhere out there in Beltway Land, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are saying “Unexpectedly!”

NAVY SM-3 LAUNCH: It’s not a recent photo but it’s spectacular. The SM-3 (Standard Missile 3) is a weapon in the Navy’s to Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. It can intercept short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. It can also hit satellites in orbit. That’s been proven. In 2008 an SM-3 destroyed a malfunctioning U.S. satellite. This article has a lot of background on the SM-3 and the U.S. Army’ THAAD.

THINK INDONESIA IS SENDING A MESSAGE?: Indonesia is blowing illegal fishing boats out of the water. This is a VOA article and the photos are impressive. Violations by Chinese fishermen played a significant role in the Philippines case against China before the Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration.

SABER STRIKE: Polish and U.S. Marine tanks maneuver during a live fire exercise in Latvia. The photo was taken June 9.

RELATED: The TUSK. Tank Urban Survival Kit. This kit was developed for city fights like the one going on in Mosul, Iraq.

RELATED: A U.S. Army M1A2 Abrams that is truly optimized for desert combat. Just like the logistics specialist walking through the photo.

TRUMP COUNTER PUNCHES: Trump continues to accuse Obama of failing to respond to Russian hacking and election meddling.

Trump on Obama’s lack of action:

“If he had the information, why didn’t he do something about it? He should have done something about it. But you don’t read that. It’s quite sad.”

Trump has his critics in a bind. If the election meddling was so terrible, then Obama was incompetent and negligent. If it wasn’t so significant, then why the sustained hand wringing and pearl clutching?

Answer: Dems want it both ways so they can excuse their election loss and protect Obama’s legacy.

Remember, Obama told Medvedev to tell Putin he’d have more “flexibility” after he was re-elected. “I will transmit this information to Vladimir,” Medvedev replied.

It’s time the Senate and FBI investigated that conversation. It sure sounds like collusion with the Kremlin.

THE GEOLOGICALLY ODD AND INTERESTING GULF OF MEXICO: The strangeness began when Africa started separating from the Americas some 200 million years ago.

PUERTO RICO GOING BANKRUPT: It’s been on the verge for a year. Investors Business Daily says Puerto Rico “essentially declared bankruptcy” earlier this month.

Puerto Rico is currently $73 billion in debt, which is close to 100% of the island’s annual output. It owes a sizeable portion of this to the island’s current and future pensioners: Puerto Rico’s pension fund is woefully underfunded. It also owes billions to general obligation bondholders — whose investments are guaranteed by the island’s constitution — and to COFINA (also known as Puerto Rico Sales Tax Financing Corp.) bondholders, who hold debt explicitly backed by sales-tax revenues.

Has Puerto Rico gone “Full Illinois” before Illinois goes Full Illinois? Not according to the article.

Illinois also has taken a page out of the Puerto Rico playbook by beginning to demonize its bondholders as greedy investment bankers profiting off the misery of others.

While such rhetoric plays well with the voters — and that is to whom Puerto Rico’s new governor, Ricardo Rossello, is clearly playing — it makes escaping the island’s financial predicaments more problematic. Once the Puerto Rican government and its oversight committee reach some sort of arrangement for moving the island forward, it will need to re-engage with capital markets to borrow money — whether it be for capital improvements, short-term credit arrangements, or something else.

If Puerto Rico spends the next year denigrating its lenders and trying to break contracts, few investors will want to take a chance lending money to the island again. Put simply, the market cannot credibly believe future repayment promises no matter what steps Puerto Rico takes — at least not until it returns to economic expansion and solvency.

What’s more, if Puerto Rico successfully breaks these covenants, municipal bondholders in Illinois — and elsewhere — are going to perceive that their investments now contain much more risk than they had previously perceived, and will demand a higher interest rate to take it.

In short, Puerto Rico’s shenanigans may hasten Illinois’ insolvency.

Oh. So we may have Full Illinois before Puerto Rico goes under, at least officially goes under.

Until history resolves the issue, here’s the interim bumper sticker: “Never go Full Illinois.”

FOUR-PLANE FORMATION: A fine show-off photo. An F-16 leads a formation that includes an A-10, an F-35 and an F-15 Strike Eagle. The photo was snapped on June 2.

THE NAVY’S AIRCRAFT CARRIER SHORTAGE: The shortage creates a “presence gap” and also hinders training. The video below the article is worth watching.

RELATED: A renaissance for light carriers?

U.S. AND CHINA DISCUSS KOREAN DENUCLEARIZATION: Denuclearization is diplo-speak for getting rid of North Korean nukes.

China and the United States agreed that efforts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula should be “complete, verifiable and irreversible”, Chinese state media said on Saturday, reporting the results of high level talks in Washington this week.

“Both sides reaffirm that they will strive for the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” a consensus document released by the official Xinhua news agency said.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had said on Thursday that the United States pressed China to ramp up economic and political pressure on North Korea, during his meeting with top Chinese diplomats and defense chiefs.

China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi and General Fang Fenghui met Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis during the talks. Yang later met with U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House, where they also discussed North Korea, Xinhua reported.

Yes, it’s talk. But China now publicly supports denuclearization and Washington and Beijing have begun a diplomatic process.

HAS NORTH KOREA ALREADY READ TRUMP’S ART OF THE DEAL?: It’s awkward, but Dennis Rodman may be up for the 2017 MVD award: Most Valuable Diplomat. OK, the award doesn’t exist. But dig: A North Korean taekwondo team has arrived in South Korea and will compete in the World Taekwondo Federation world championships this weekend. This is a very interesting diplomatic signal by the paranoids in Pyongyang. In the Koreas taekwondo is taken very seriously. It could be Kim Jong Un expects his team to win and he will tout team success as a major political triumph, etcetera. But South Korea is paying for the North Korean team’s expenses. The Trump Administration seeks de-nuclearization on the peninsula, not regime change. So stay tuned. Tuned to Instapundit.

HOUSE TO HOUSE IN THE OLD CITY: Bitter combat in Mosul as Iraqi forces tighten the noose.

U.S.-trained urban warfare units are leading the fight in the maze of narrow alleyways of the Old City, the last district in the hands of the Sunni Islamist insurgents.

Iraqi authorities are hoping to declare victory in the northern Iraqi city in the Muslim Eid holiday, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, during the next few days.

Military analysts say government troops’ advance will gather pace after Islamic State fighters blew up the 850-year-old al-Nuri mosque and its famous leaning minaret on Wednesday.

The report says Iraqi forces are attempting to open safe routes for civilians to escape from Islamic State fighters and avoid getting trapped in the final battle.

BONUS MONEY: The U.S. military wants more money to pay bonuses to keep trained personnel and attract new recruits.

In 2010 the U.S. military adopted a new bonus system for scarce medical and other technical specialists. The new program enabled the military to pay market rates for specialties like brain surgery and Internet security. In the past, the bonus program was not directly linked to the market salaries for needed specialists, who would not join and work for existing pay levels linked to rank and time in the service. In many cases, where specialists were needed for a short time, qualified civilians were hired. This specialist shortage has been a growing problem, including for purely military specialists. Currently, the military spends about half a billion dollars a year for bonuses, although during the height of the Iraq war, it was over a billion dollars a year.

Yes, it takes money to train and retain.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Do giraffes get struck by lightning more often than other animals?

NORTH KOREAN CHEMICAL WEAPONS: North Korea has them.

Assessing the chemical artillery. North Korea is believed to have placed a high priority on chemical weapons ever since Kim Il-sung’s “Declaration of Chemicalization” in 1961. But the quantity, quality, and durability of the North Korean chemical arsenal are unknown. In the 1970s, intelligence estimates by the United States and South Korea rated North Korea’s chemical warfare potential as mostly defensive. By the late 1980s, views had changed; Pyongyang was believed to have 250 tons of mustard gas and some nerve agents. By 2010, North Korea was estimated to possess 2,500 to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons, mostly sarin and the nerve agent VX. Furthermore, it is assumed that North Korean military doctrine treats chemical weapons as a natural aspect of the nation’s scheme of maneuver, and that chemical weapons would be used from the outset of hostilities. Chemical weapons are reportedly pre-deployed—with one out of three North Korean projectiles believed to be chemical. The February assassination of Kim Jong-nam in Malaysia with VX was undoubtedly a reminder to North Korea’s enemies of the chemical threat that Pyongyang poses.

Bruce Bennett of the RAND Corporation reports that eight manufacturing facilities have been identified in North Korea, capable of producing 5,000 tons of chemical weapons a year during peacetime and 12,000 tons during wartime. The Nuclear Threat Initiative, meanwhile, reports that North Korea has 11 production and storage facilities—in addition to 13 research and development facilities, two test ranges, and four military bases equipped with chemical weapons, as well as facilities near the cities of Kanggye and Sakchu prepared to fill chemical artillery.

MORE:

Reason to hesitate. Details about North Korea’s chemical arsenal are not known with confidence. We do not know for sure what chemical weapons North Korea would use or how it would use them. The North’s repeated threats to turn Seoul into a sea of fire may be only rhetoric. The North’s strategic views concerning deterrence and escalation are also unknown. History shows a willingness in Pyongyang to engage in military provocations short of the level that would justify a renewal of the Korean War. Nonetheless, it is possible to make a rough estimate of the impact of a massive chemical artillery attack on a large urban center such as Seoul. Ultimately, such an estimate is illustrative, representing one of many possible scenarios, yet it can still provide a reasonable understanding of the potential magnitude of a sarin artillery attack against civilian population centers.

Long article but well worth the read.

CHINESE SPIES: They’re not just in your computer, they’re in Virginia.

CHINA CRACKS DOWN: On toothpick crossbows. Check out the pictures of this tiny weapon.

CANADIAN SNIPER SETS RECORD FOR LONGEST CONFIRMED KILL: He made the shot of in northern Iraq. He hit an ISIS terrorist 3,450 meters away.

RELATED: The Newsweek list of long-range sniper kills the article cites is missing this shot of 2,815 meters by Australian snipers in 2012. Admittedly, two snipers fired and one hit. As the blog says, “That is an impressive feat, but calling it a world record is unfair in my opinion.”

UPDATE: Link fixed.

RELATED: Why snipers rule.

THE MEDIA HAVE ALREADY FORGOTTEN: Hodgkinson’s attempted political coup. My latest essay in The American Spectator.

ANALYSIS CORRECT: Trump-obsessed media ignored Obama Administration scandals.

WHY DOGFIGHTS ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN: Some thoughts in the aftermath of the USN’s downing of a Syrian jet.