MY LATEST NY OBSERVER ESSAY: The Clinton State-Foundation’s Global Bribery and Crony Access Scam. (bumped from yesterday).

THE DEBATE OVER THE WORLD’S LARGEST PYRAMID: A real pyramid, not a crooked scheme-type pyramid. The largest pyramid, in terms of the size of the pyramid’s base, is located just outside the city of Puebla, Mexico. Here’s more detailed information on The Great Pyramid of Cholula.

FRENCH BURKINI BAN UPDATE: France’s top administrative court has overturned a lower court ruling that upheld banning burkinis. The report notes that the court decision addresses the ban in the town of Villeneuve-Loubet “but the binding decision is expected to set a legal precedent for all municipalities that have issued similar decrees.”

FIVE DECADES OF WAR IN COLOMBIA: The Economist looks at the August 24th peace deal and calls it “a somewhat just peace.” StrategyPage examined the deal earlier in the month (August 8). As The Economist notes, the date for the referendum has now been set: October 2.

UPDATE: Spelling corrected.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: My latest New York Observer “War On Honesty” column examines a national disgrace, the Clinton State-Foundation.

THEY’LL BE RELEASED SEPTEMBER 13: A federal court has ordered the State Department to hand over another batch of Clinton emails by September 13. Given the way the State Department and the Obama Administration obstruct justice we may see them September 13, 2033, if ever.

Get this:

Judicial Watch said the department has admitted in a court filing that some of the emails that Clinton had deleted included some “Benghazi-related documents.” That case involves emails between Clinton and the White House in the week after the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans.

Weren’t these supposed to be personal emails? Didn’t Hillary tell us they were about Chelsea’s wedding and yoga classes?

APPALACHIA’S MELUNGEONS: From The Economist.

Excerpt:

The two big questions about them encapsulate their ambiguous status—on the boundaries of races and territories, and between suffering and hope, imagination and fact. Where did the Melungeons come from? And do they still exist?

A STREET CAR NAMED STATE DEPARTMENT: “I have always depended on the kindness of donors.”

US MILITARY SEEKS GEOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY.

WHY OBAMA LET IRAN’S GREEN REVOLUTION FAIL: Eli Lake at Bloomberg News discusses a new book by The Wall Street Journal‘s Jay Solomon, The Iran Wars.

Excerpt:

…Obama wasn’t just reluctant to show solidarity in 2009, he feared the demonstrations would sabotage his secret outreach to Iran…Behind the scenes, Obama overruled advisers who wanted to do what America had done at similar transitions from dictatorship to democracy, and signal America’s support.

THE CLINTON STATE-FOUNDATION’S GLOBAL BRIBERY AND CRONY ACCESS SCAM.

MY LATEST CREATORS SYNDICATE COLUMN: This week the International Criminal Court convicted an Islamist terrorist on the charge of destroying cultural heritage sites. Does it matter when radical Islamists believe the conqueror who brings the true religion has the right to erase the false gods?

BULLYING’S EVOLUTIONARY EDGE: According to the BBC “bullying has been observed in fish.” And “High-ranking spotted hyenas also bully their subordinates.” Indeed — we see that at the DNC. Later: “This seems to suggest a bleak conclusion. If so many creatures bully, perhaps bullying is innate in us, something we cannot escape.” Not necessarily. Ambush. Remember that term. It’s the sensible military man’s solution to bullying.

A bit later:

In more subtle ways, adults also bully. There are many instances of workplace bullying and “psychopathic” bosses, while politicians use “scapegoating” to incite antagonism against minority groups. This approach “creates a common enemy when there are tensions in a society,” says de Waal.

In Chicago and at the White House this is called “community organizing,” except the goal is to incite antagonism among groups –majority, minority, it doesn’t matter.

That’s the violence. Now for the sex:

…bullying helps dominant animals to intimidate their subordinates, and that this has clear evolutionary benefits. It ensures that the dominant individuals have better access to food and to the opposite sex.

All this article’s missing is drugs and rock and roll.

FRANCE VERSUS THE BURKINI: The Economist offers its in-depth analysis. Here’s a long pull quote:

When the French began to debate a ban on the burqa in 2009, for instance, Barack Obama declared in Cairo that Western countries should avoid “dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear” under “the pretence of liberalism”. Some civil-liberties groups within France have tried—but so far failed—to get the burkini ban overturned in the courts. Yet French governments bristle at the notion that their various attempts to defend laïcité amount to intolerance or an infringement of the freedom of expression. They may note that in 2014 the European Court of Human Rights upheld France’s burqa ban. What outsiders fail to understand, the French argue, is that such body wear is not just a casual choice but part of an attempt by political Islamism to win recruits and test the resilience of the French republic. Mr Valls dismisses as naive those who see it as being no different than a wetsuit. The burkini, he says, is part of a “political project”, and complacency plays into the hands of Islamists.

Worth the read.

HILLARY’S STRATEGY ACCORDING TO POLITICO: Run out the clock. 75 days left in the campaign so the clock’s running. Trump needs to pound away on her corruption and sleaze. If she’s running out the clock (in the basketball sense) I guess that means he needs to run a full court press. But he doesn’t have the press, does he? I don’t think the AP report has cracked Hillary’s Media Privilege. Media Privilege is why Team Hillary thinks it can ride out the scandals by opening pickle jars and cackling.

IN AUSTIN, TEXAS SPEECH TRUMP TALKS BORDER SECURITY: Not at all surprising. He also continued his pitch to ethnic minority voters. Tough line here: “We reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton, who sees communities of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future. She is a disgrace.”

REUTERS OWES US A NEW TITLE TO THIS STORY: Currently it’s titled Special Report: Massacre reports show U.S. inability to curb Iraq militias. Here’s the historically correct title: Special Report: Massacre reports show the Obama Administration’s inability to curb Iraq militias. By historically correct, I refer to the titles of media reports of massacre and mayhem during the Bush Administration. Obama Administration strategy shaped the Fallujah operation the report analyzes. It’s almost like Obama’s not president, isn’t it?

800 MILLION YEAR OLD AIR: New research on the rise of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere. Here’s to breathing.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS DISCOVERS CLINTON DONORS RECEIVED SPECIAL TREATMENT AT THE STATE DEPT: The AP publishes a rather detailed look at The Clinton Foundation, its donors, and Hillary’s State Dept shenanigans.

Here’s the AP’s claim:

The AP’s findings represent the first systematic effort to calculate the scope of the intersecting interests of Clinton foundation donors and people who met personally with Clinton or spoke to her by phone about their needs.

I think there have been several attempts to conduct a systematic analysis, but those attempts encountered stonewalls. The AP has examined phone logs and email traffic and come up with some interesting numbers.

THE IRIDIUM SATELLITE NETWORK IS GETTING OLD: Customers are worried that service will degrade. The Pentagon is an Iridium customer. The company wants to replace its entire fleet by the end of 2017.

TWITTER IS IN YAHOO-LEVEL TROUBLE

CANADA ABANDONS ITS ONLY DEEP WATER ARCTIC PORT: The reasons were economic. The concern is Arctic sovereignty.

JAPANESE CLAIM CHINA DREW A RED LINE: From The Japan Times:

China strongly warned a high-level Japanese official around late June that Tokyo should not send Self-Defense Forces to join U.S. operations that test the freedom of navigation in the disputed South China Sea, diplomatic sources said Saturday. Japan will “cross a red line” if SDF vessels take part in so-called freedom of navigation operations, Ambassador Cheng Yonghua told the official, the sources said. Cheng even hinted at military action.

The SDF is the official name of the Japanese military. “SDF vessels” are the Japanese navy. Obama’s Syrian “red line” vanished, but that’s Obama. Read the article. China and Japan have exchanged several serious warnings.

TRUMP CALLS FOR SPECIAL PROSECUTOR TO INVESTIGATE HILLARY AND CLINTON FOUNDATION CORRUPTION: The special prosecutor would investigate her email scandal and her “pay to play” State Department.

AMERICA’S SLANTED MAINSTREAM MEDIA: A brief survey.