MSNPC (MSNBC) fake news: 455 stories on Stormy Daniels, ZERO on illegal war in Yemen

Apollonian

Apollonian

Guest Columnist
In One Year, MSNBC Covered Stormy Daniels 455 Times, War in Yemen 0​

By Gov't Slaves on 11/15/2018

Link: https://govtslaves.info/2018/11/15/...ed-stormy-daniels-455-times-war-in-yemen-0-2/

As FAIR has noted before (1/8/18, 3/20/18), to MSNBC, the carnage and destruction the US and its Gulf Monarchy allies are leveling against the poorest country in the Arab world is simply a non-issue.

On July 2, a year had passed since the cable network’s last segment mentioning US participation in the war on Yemen, which has killed in excess of 15,000 people and resulted in over a million cases of cholera. The US is backing a Saudi-led bombing campaign with intelligence, refueling, political cover, military hardware and, as of March, ground troops. None of this matters at all to what Adweek (4/3/18) calls “the network of the Resistance,” which has since its last mention of the US’s role in the destruction of Yemen found time to run over a dozen segments highlighting war crimes committed by the Syrian and Russian governments in Syria.

By way of contrast, as MSNBC was marking a year without mentioning the US role in Yemen, the PBS NewsHour was running a three-part series on the war, with the second part (7/3/18) headlined, “American-Made Bombs in Yemen Are Killing Civilians, Destroying Infrastructure and Fueling Anger at the US.” The NewsHour’s Jane Ferguson reported:

The aerial bombing campaign has not managed to dislodge the rebels, but has hit weddings, hospitals and homes. The US military supports the Saudi coalition with logistics and intelligence. The United States it also sells the Saudis and coalition partners many of the bombs they drop on Yemen.

MSNBC chat show/Starbucks commercial Morning Joe did run one segment (4/25/18) that vaguely mentioned the war on Yemen, but failed to note the US’s role in it at all, much less that Washington is arming and backing the conflict’s primary aggressor. Instead, they did the perverse inversion––previously mastered by Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl (FAIR.org, 6/27/17)—of not only ignoring the US’s major role in killing thousands, but painting the US as a noble haven for refugees. The schlocky segment, an interview with writer Mohammed Al Samawi, was a shallow mixture of “interfaith” pablum, poverty porn and self-congratulations to the US for taking in refugees (without, of course, acknowledging that they’re seeking refuge from a crisis the US has created).

For a bit more context, in the time period of July 3, 2017, to July 3, 2018, MSNBC dedicated zero segments to the US’s war in Yemen, but 455 segments to Stormy Daniels. This isn’t to suggest the Stormy Daniels matter isn’t newsworthy—presidential corruption is per se important. But one has to wonder if this particular thread of venality is 455 stories more important than Trump aggressively supporting a war that’s killing hundreds of people a month, injuring thousands, and subjecting millions to famine and cholera. Did MSNBC editors, poring over the latest academic foreign policy literature, really come to the conclusion Trump’s war in Yemen isn’t important? Or is MSNBC simply fueled by partisan Russia dot-connecting and stories that allow them to say “porn star” as much as possible?

What seems most likely is MSNBC has found that attacking Russia from the right on matters of foreign policy is the most elegant way to preserve its “progressive” image while still serving traditional centers of power—namely, the Democratic Party establishment, corporate sponsors, and their own revolving door of ex-spook and military contractor-funded talking heads (3/26/18). After all, Obama backed the war on Yemen—though not nearly as aggressively as Trump has—and it’s difficult to make a coherent left-wing, anti-war criticism when the current Republican in office is simply carrying out your guy’s policy, but on steroids.

In any event, it’s not like any Yemenis are going to pull ads, turn down appearances, or phone Comcast higher-ups complaining. So, who cares? To be poor and brown—to say nothing of not serving the immediate partisan interests of the Democratic party—is evidently to not matter much in the eyes of MSNBC producers and on-air talent.

ACTION ALERT:

Please tell MSNBC to pay serious attention to the US role in the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Yemen.

Contact: Deb Finan, Senior VP, Programming and Production

Email: debbie.finan@nbcuni.com


Twitter: @MSNBC

This article first appeared at FAIR.
 
In Close Vote, House Blocks Debate on Yemen War​

Vote was tied to bill cracking down on gray wolves

Jason Ditz/ Posted on November 14, 2018/Categories News/Tags War Powers Act, Wolves, Yemen

Link: https://news.antiwar.com/2018/11/14/in-close-vote-house-blocks-debate-on-yemen-war/

On Wednesday, in a vote heavily along party lines, the House passed the Manage our Wolves Act 201-187. The vote effectively blocked all debate on the war in Yemen, and precluded that conflict from coming up for a future vote.

This is the second straight year that an attempt to challenge America’s unauthorized involvement in the Yemen War under the War Powers Act has been derailed by House leadership through last minute rule changes. This time, it required tying the rule change to a vote about gray wolves.

This led to a bizarre situation where they were debating the constitutionality of the Yemen War on one side, and the desire to shoot gray wolves on the other side. This was meant to give cover to lawmakers, to say they were voting because of the wolves instead of the unpopular Saudi-led war.

The close vote, and near universal 6-172 vote by House Democrats, may suggest that there will be a shift in a future vote on the Yemen War when the Democrats take over the House next year, though their leadership has been similarly inclined to let the wars go unchallenged in Congress.
 
This Didn’t Age Well… Michael Avenatti Spouts Off at Donald Trump Jr. ​

Link: http://www.hideoutnow.com/2020/02/this-didnt-age-well-michael-avenatti.html

Creepy Porn Lawyer Michael Avenatti was convicted by a jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in the Nike extortion trial.

In November, a federal grand jury charged Michael Avenatti with extortion and wire fraud in the case where he was charged with attempting to extort millions of dollars from Nike.

According to the complaint, Avenatti threatened to hold a press conference to announce misconduct by Nike unless the athletic apparel company hired Avenatti and his co-conspirator to conduct an internal investigation for over $20 million.

Avenatti faced three charges after a federal grand jury in November returned a superseding indictment adding 1 count of wire fraud, and on Friday he was convicted on all three charges.

Avenatti faces up to 42 years in prison and the sentencing is set for June 17.

And to think, it wasn’t that long ago that Michael Avenatti was shooting off his mouth threatening Donald Trump, Jr.

Who’s laughing now?

Avenatti’s former client Stormy Daniels weighed in. [ck site link, above]
 
Stormy Daniels reacts to Michael Avenatti's sentencing: 'I realized I too became his victim​

Link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...i-too-became-his-victim/ar-AALWBei?li=BBnb7Kz

Paul Best 8 hrs ago

Stormy Daniels, who Michael Avenatti once represented but then allegedly embezzled $300,000 from, said Thursday that she hopes her beleaguered former attorney is able to turn his life around after being sentenced to 30 months in prison Thursday for a separate extortion case.

"He was a man you wanted to trust and believe in, but the longer I knew him I began witnessing his lies and dishonesty until I realized I too became his victim," Stormy Daniels said in a statement Thursday. "I am sure today he found a reckoning. Let’s hope that that leads to [an] honest realization that he must change his life."

Avenatti rocketed to fame in 2018 when he represented Daniels in lawsuits against then-President Donald Trump, who the adult film actress said she had an affair with a decade earlier. Daniels alleged that she was paid $130,000 in 2016 by Trump's personal lawyer to stay silent about the fling. Trump denies the affair ever happened.

MICHAEL AVENATTI SENTENCED TO 2.5 YEARS IN PRISON IN NIKE EXTORTION CASE

A frequent guest on cable news and prolific user of Twitter, Avenatti eventually starting hinting that he might run against former President Trump in the 2020 presidential election, but those political aspirations went up in flames when prosecutors in California and New York charged him with fraud in March 2019.

A couple of months after that, federal prosecutors in New York accused Avenatti of embezzling $300,000 from Daniels by using a doctored document to divert proceeds from her book deal into his own accounts for personal and business expenses.

"[Avenatti] blatantly lied to and stole from his client to maintain his extravagant lifestyle, including to pay for, among other things, a monthly car payment on a Ferrari," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in May 2019 when announcing the charges. "Far from zealously representing his client, Avenatti, as alleged, instead engaged in outright deception and theft, victimizing rather than advocating for his client."

Prosecutors said Avenatti eventually only paid Daniels half of the $300,000 advance she was owed for her book. Avenatti, meanwhile, contended at the time that no money was "ever misappropriated or mishandled" and that his agreement for representing Daniels "included a percentage of any book proceeds."

That trial is on the docket for later this year in New York.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

On Thursday, Avenatti was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for trying to extort Nike out of as much as $25 million, claiming that he could do billions of dollars in damage with bad publicity.

U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe sharply criticized Avenatti in court on Thursday, saying that he "had become drunk on the power of his platform, or what he perceived the power of his platform to be."

"He had become someone who operated as if the laws and the rules that applied to everyone else didn’t apply to him," the judge said.

Avenatti, meanwhile, gave a tearful apology in the courtroom before his sentencing.

"I and I alone have destroyed my career, my relationships and my life," Avenatti said. "Your honor, I’ve learned that all the fame, notoriety and money in the world is meaningless. TV and Twitter, your honor, mean nothing."
 

Children starve as Yemen teeters on a return to fighting​

By ANWAR SALEM and SAMY MAGDYOctober 19, 2022

Link: https://apnews.com/article/russia-u...e-east-yemen-c317bb3c2dceb5b32fec987b169ae2ee

Women hold their malnourished children at the Hays Rural Hospital in Hodeida, Yemen, Oct. 11, 2022. For years starvation has been an everyday threat for Yemen’s children. Now, as the war threatens to escalate between the country’s warring parties after months of a tenuous truce, there are fears that it could get worse. (AP Photo/Hussam Al-Bakry)
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Women hold their malnourished children at the Hays Rural Hospital in Hodeida, Yemen, Oct. 11, 2022. For years starvation has been an everyday threat for Yemen’s children. Now, as the war threatens to escalate between the country’s warring parties after months of a tenuous truce, there are fears that it could get worse. (AP Photo/Hussam Al-Bakry)

HAYS, Yemen (AP) — An emaciated little girl lies motionless on a hospital bed and struggles to breathe. Her body is covered with sores. She can barely open her eyes.
Hafsa Ahmed is about 2. About a dozen other children in the red-brick hospital in this southern Yemeni city are also dying of starvation.
Hunger has long threatened the lives of hundreds of thousands of Yemen’s children. Now, the war between the country’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels and a Saudi-led coalition is threatening to escalate after months of a tenuous truce. Yemenis, and international assistance groups, worry that the situation will get even worse.
In the city of Hodeida, with a population of roughly 3 million, al-Thawra Hospital receives 2,500 patients daily, including “super-malnourished” children, said Joyce Msuya, U.N. assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs. She visited the facility this month.
Around 2.2 million Yemeni children under the age of 5 are hungry. More than half a million are severely malnourished. Some 1.3 million pregnant or breastfeeding women had severe malnutrition this year, the United Nations says.
“This is one of the saddest visits I’ve ever done in my professional life,” Msuya said in a video released by the U.N. “There are immense needs. Half of Yemeni hospitals are not functioning, or they are completely destroyed by the war. We need more support to save lives in Yemen, children, women and men.”

YEMEN​


The war in Ukraine is exacerbating the situation.
The Yemeni diet depends heavily on wheat. Ukraine supplied Yemen with 40% of its grain, until Russia’s invasion cut the flow. In developed countries, people are working harder to pay higher bills. In Yemen, food is 60% more expensive than it was last year. And in poor countries, inflation can mean death.
“Yemen has been hit three times by the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” said Peter Salisbury, a Yemen expert at the International Crisis Group. “First, by the loss of food supplies from Ukraine and higher prices on international markets. Then, by higher fuel prices. And third, by a shift in international focus.”
War has raged for eight years in Yemen between Shiite Houthi rebels and pro-government forces backed by a coalition of Sunni Gulf Arab states. The Iran-backed Houthis swept down from the mountains in 2014, occupied northern Yemen and the country’s capital, Sanaa, and forced the internationally recognized government to flee into exile to Saudi Arabia.
Since then, more than 150,000 people were killed by the violence and 3 million were displaced. Two-thirds of the population get food assistance.
There’s a truce in place now despite the two sides’ failure to renew it this month. Hafsa and more than half a million other Yemeni children are severely malnourished. Every 10 minutes, a child in Yemen dies from preventable illness, according to Save the Children.
Hafsa is the youngest of six. One died from malnutrition. Her father Ahmed, 47, works as a day laborer. Each day he can afford only some flour and cooking oil.
He and his family live in the district of Hays, about 120 kilometers (74 miles) south of the port city of Hodeida, which has seen some of the fiercest fighting in Yemen’s conflict.
The children in Hays Hospital have swollen bellies and twig-like limbs. Eventually, prolonged malnutrition “causes their organs to stop functioning,” Dr. Nabouta Hassan said.
Hassan, who oversees the hospital’s malnutrition ward, said that every month it receives up to 30 children suffering from diseases related to acute malnutrition.
Hodeida, along with the northern province of Hajjah, includes the hardest-hit areas by extremely severe food insecurity and acute malnutrition, according to the U.N.
Mohammed Hussein, a 49-year-old father of five, lives in a camp for displaced people in the outskirts of the city of Abs in northern Hajjah province.
He said he has been displaced four times since the war began in 2014.
“I lost my home, farmland, everything,” he said over the phone.
He lost a 9-month-old son three years ago. He has a 1-year-old and a 3-year-old who are starving.
Their main dish is bread mixed with water and salt. Some days, neighbors give his family meat, chicken or pasta. Hussein’s too poor to take his kids to the hospital.
“There is no money, and I am jobless,” he said. ”They could die also from hunger.”
The U.N. food agency has cut rations for millions of people due to critical funding gaps and soaring global food prices. The World Food Program has for months prioritized the most vulnerable 13.5 million Yemenis, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA.
The U.N. said that by the end of September, its humanitarian response plan for Yemen secured $2 billion of the $4.27 billion needed to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance and protection services to 17.9 million people.
Abdulwasea Mohammed, advocacy, media and campaigns manager for Oxfam in Yemen, said his group needs more money, more consistent access to the most vulnerable, and a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
“The response is saving lives every day despite this,” he said.
 

Michael Avenatti sentenced to 14 years in prison for stealing millions of dollars from clients​

Link: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/05/poli...-client-embezzlement/index.html?utm_term=link

Devan Cole
By Devan Cole, CNN
Updated 5:12 PM EST, Mon December 5, 2022

Attorney Michael Avenatti in 2019 in New York City.

Attorney Michael Avenatti in 2019 in New York City.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
CNN —
Disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti was sentenced Monday to 14 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $11 million in restitution for embezzling millions of dollars from four of his clients and obstruction.
Avenatti pleaded guilty earlier this year to four counts of wire fraud for each client he stole from and one count of endeavoring to obstruct the administration of the Internal Revenue Code. Prosecutors said he obstructed the IRS’ effort to collect $5 million in unpaid payroll taxes for Tully’s Coffee.
The sentence handed down by federal district Judge James Selna will begin after Avenatti completes a five-year prison term he’s currently serving after being convicted in two separate trials in New York.
Selna also ordered Avenatti to pay over $10 million in restitution to four clients and to the IRS.
“Michael Avenatti was a corrupt lawyer who claimed he was fighting for the little guy. In fact, he only cared about his own selfish interests,” US Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement following the sentencing. “He stole millions of dollars from his clients – all to finance his extravagant lifestyle that included a private jet and race cars. As a result of his illegal acts, he has lost his right to practice law in California, and now he will serve a richly deserved prison sentence.”
Dean Steward, an attorney for Avenatti, said in a statement to CNN that the sentence “was overly harsh and uncalled for,” adding that his client described it in court as being “off the charts.”
“When compared with similar high-profile cases, the unfairness is glaring,” Steward said.
Monday’s sentence represents the latest episode in an extraordinary years-long legal drama surrounding Avenatti, whose representation of Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who alleged she had an affair with former President Donald Trump years before he ran for office, made the pugnacious attorney a household name.
“Avenatti’s fraud was egregious, and the court plainly meant to send a strong message. But a 14-year sentence is extraordinarily long given all the circumstances,” said CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig.
The prison sentence Avenatti is currently serving was given after he was convicted for attempting to extort millions of dollars from Nike and stealing nearly $300,000 from a book advance from Daniels, his then-client. (Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels.)
Avenatti had faced a statutory maximum of 83 years in prison in the California case.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department dropped the 31 remaining fraud counts Avenatti was facing after he agreed to plead guilty to the handful of charges. Federal prosecutors said in a court filing at the time that they wouldn’t move ahead with the remaining 31 counts of wire fraud, bank fraud and tax-related charges because the judge could consider those allegations when he eventually sentenced Avenatti.
In pleading guilty earlier this year, Avenatti admitted to stealing millions of dollars from clients, including $4 million from a client with major disabilities. According to the indictment, after Avenatti negotiated settlements for the clients that required payment to go to them, he would lie to the clients about the terms of the settlements, instead depositing the funds into attorney trust accounts he controlled. He would then embezzle and misappropriate those funds, according to the indictment, and to prevent discovery of his scheme, he would tell clients the settlement proceeds hadn’t yet been paid, among other tactics.
This story has been updated with additional details.
 
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