Carmen Russell-Sluchansky

Carmen Russell-Sluchansky is a multimedia and investigative journalist based in Washington, DC, formerly for MintPress, and several other news agencies including National Geographic. Prior to joining Mint Press, for three years, he hosted daily international radio news show Due Diligence during which he covered national politics including all major policy debates, the 2012 presidential election and significant Supreme Court and appellate cases. Prior to that, he primarily reported from abroad including China, Japan, the Middle East, Haiti, Central America and Southeast Asia primarily focusing on development and human rights issues. He has also reported from the United Nations and World Trade Organization and his acclaimed documentary work on Haiti has reached millions of viewers internationally having been broadcast on major networks such as PBS, ABC News and Nippon TV. His work has also appeared on MSNBC.com and the BBC and in Asia! Magazine, The China Post, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel. He holds degrees from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and the Georgetown University Law Center

Illegal Wildlife And Charcoal Trades Fuel Terror Groups In Africa, Says UN Report

The report covers the gamut of illegal trade, including elephant ivory poaching, other animal poaching, illicit timber and charcoal extraction, illegal fisheries and improper waste dumping.

Kenya Environmental Crime

NAIROBI --- Along one of Africa’s busiest - and most dangerous - roads, Mombasa Highway, you can stop by a shop for gas, a bottled soda and, maybe, a bag of recently burned charcoal. The grey-ish black blocks are sold in plastic burlap bags and provide many rural residents with their primary source of home fuel for cooking and heating. Some of

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Bleeding By Proxy: MintPress Peels Back The Layers Of The Syrian Opposition

With the Syrian war turning into a proxy war marked by sectarian clashes, MintPress looks at the opposition groups involved, who is supporting them and why.

Free Syrian Army fighters take cover from incoming Syrian Army fire in the Izaa district in Aleppo, Syria, Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012. (AP/Manu Brabo)

WASHINGTON --- Since the onset of the war in Syria, the Obama administration has openly lent its support to the Free Syrian Army along with many Western nations, including France, Turkey and the Gulf Arab states -- particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar -- in an open and active attempt to bring regime change to Syria by toppling the country’s secular

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Hersh, Higgins and MIT Rocket Scientists Weigh in on Syria Sarin Gas Attack

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, MIT professors and rocket scientists and blogger Elliot Higgins on the sarin gas attack that almost dragged the US into war in Syria.

Syria Chemical Weapons Feature photo

It’s a story that has been framed many ways: the battle of an old-school journalist against a new media blogger; a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist now on the fringes of the journalistic community; and an American media that has again refused to buck the official White House line. Last week, the London Review of Books published Seymour Hersh’s

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Edward Snowden And The Right To Travel

Supporters are pushing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to revalidate Snowden’s right to travel, but the NSA whistleblower is probably going to stay stuck in Russia for some time.

Snowden

On June 23, 2013, Edward Snowden boarded a plane from Hong Kong -- where he had fled from his home and life in Hawaii -- to Moscow. Moscow was not his intended destination, but rather a stop in transit to another country -- maybe Iceland, maybe Ecuador -- where Snowden planned on seeking political refuge. U.S. officials were disappointed when Hong

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Families Of 9/11 Victims Demand That US Release Classified Documents

A bill is fighting its way through Congress that would declassify 28 pages redacted from a report on 9/11 that could link the Saudi government to the attacks.

Geraldine Davie

WASHINGTON-- Sylvia Carver was near Washington, D.C., listening to the radio, when she heard that a plane had slammed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. She just knew, somehow, her sister Sharon, a Pentagon employee, was hurt. Carver called her sister’s phone over and over, but no one picked up. “She always answered her phone,” Carver told

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Supreme Court To Mutual Fund Managers: No More Enrons, Thank You

U.S. Supreme Court extends whistleblower protections to employees of private companies that contract with public corporations. The move is hoped to encourage revelations of faulty or fraudulent accounting, and avoid another Enron scandal in the process.

Britain Enron Theatre

WASHINGTON -- Invoking the scandal that led to the collapse of Enron, the U.S. Supreme Court has declared that employees of private companies that contract with public corporations are entitled to the same whistleblower protections as the employees of the public entities themselves. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court granted two former employees

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The Powerful And The Powerless: Homelessness In The Nation’s Capital

More than 7,000 homeless live in Washington, from the woman living in a cardboard and duct tape structure near the White House to the panhandlers working K Street.

homeless

John Gillis wakes up every morning at 5 a.m., showers, gets dressed and then shares breakfast with maybe 100 other men. He steps out of the old school building where he lives and heads for a local coffee shop for some caffeine. “That’s the real alarm clock,” Gillis said. Then he’ll head to the library and get to work. That means writing.

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