Protect Sacred Bear Lodge from rare-earth mining

I have just sent the following comment to the US Forest Service in opposition to the proposed Rare Element Resources Inc. project to develop an open-pit mine with associated infrastructure and support facilities. The project also includes reclamation, monitoring, mitigation, and closing.

The Black Hills (South Dakota) Clean Water Alliance is organizing a national/international campaign to defeat this horribly destructive project. 

The proposed Rare Earth mineral mining project would be located approximately 12 miles north of Sundance, Wyoming, and includes 1,060 acres of National Forest Service lands and 640 acres of private lands.

This site called Mato Tapila (Bear Lodge) has been a sacred spiritual gathering site for indigenous tribes throughout the entire region that includes South Dakota, Wyoming and beyond for countless generations.

Comments are now needed to the US Forest Service in opposition to this project.  I urge you all to send comments using the easy form at:   

Submit a public comment opposing the project: https://cara.fs2c.usda.gov/Public/CommentInput?Project=291093 

Here is what I wrote:

I have been to the sacred Bear Lodge site and am astounded that this proposed plan for a 100+ acre open pit mine next to it is being considered. How could the government do such a deceitful thing?

The site of the proposed project is located entirely on territory delineated in the 1868 Treaty of Ft. Laramie, which was signed and entered into by both The Great Sioux Nation and the United States government.  Why can't the government ever honor its agreements?

This project will have a horrific impact on our Mother Earth through the local air quality; potential exposure to radioactive or hazardous elements; desecration of the sacred site; affect on wildlife species and habitats, including northern long-eared bats; and impacts on local water resources and quality, acid rock drainage, and radiation risks associated with processing rare earth-bearing mineral deposits. 

All said, it is a disaster in the making.

I absolutely oppose this farce of an operation for all the environmental reasons stated just above.  But I also totally oppose this on spiritual and moral grounds. 

Mato Tapila is a sacred spiritual jewel for many indigenous tribes from the region. This operation is a moral outrage as it flies in the face of the treaty giving these lands to the tribes. It represents another betrayal by our sick-minded government once again showing the world that the word of Washington is worth absolutely nothing. 

Every single person with their dirty hands in this ugly pie should be ashamed.

Bruce Gagnon
Brunswick, Maine  

Trump calls Iran a 'starving nation'

• Welcome to a TACO Monday. Look at this utter propaganda posted on Trump’s Truth Social. Iran Parliament Speaker: ‘We Are Hungry, We Cannot Survive’. And Iran's response just above. 
• Iran’s SNSC Secretary, Mohsen Rezaee: "Trump wants to start a new game called 'economic warfare'. We have not attacked any of America's economic interests until now. So far, we have only targeted military bases, but if they choose to escalate to an economic war, we are prepared to target all American oil and economic companies in the region. If countries surrounding Iran join the US in an economic war against us, we will first warn them, and if they continue, we’ll target their interests. If they hold any meetings with anti-Iran groups in the region, we will strike there as well." 

• The Head of the Iranian Parliament news agency Mehdi Rahimi revealed to Al Mayadeen that Tehran has received an official invitation to join the Mecca Agreement. Rahimi confirmed that the proposal is currently under consideration by Iranian leadership. The agreement was signed earlier this month between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan, aimed at forming collective deterrence against attacks targeting these nations. [Sounds like it might be aimed at growing distrust of Israel. Time will tell.]
• Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur: 'An International Protection Presence in West Bank/east Jerusalem and Gaza is absolutely URGENT. Third states have an obligation, per the ICJ, to act to end Israel's unlawful occupation. Will #UNSG's good offices and #UNGA (#Uniting4Peace) help overcome the #UNSC paralysis?'

• Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman: Israel has no strategy for survival in the long term. It assumes that it can always live by pointing a gun at everyone else, and this is not a survival strategy by any standard. So there are grave doubts in Israel about its longevity as a state.

• Lt. General Apti Alaudinov said it to TASS last week: "We must realize that the war in the Middle East will only gain momentum. I think Israel's aim is precisely this, for the war to gain maximum momentum, to draw in both the US and the entire NATO bloc. They are good at this. Ultimately they will overestimate their strength and cease to exist as a state."

• Sovereignista: Guyana’s UN Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, a vocal advocate for Palestinian rights and one of the Security Council’s sharpest critics of the Israeli war on Gaza, took the lead in the race to become the next UN secretary-general, topping the council’s second informal straw poll with eight “encourage” votes. She overtook Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan, who had led the first round in July but slipped to a tie for second alongside IAEA chief Rafael Grossi of Argentina [a zionist agent]. As Guyana’s envoy, Rodrigues-Birkett has repeatedly condemned the Israeli war on Gaza, previously telling the council that Israeli strikes reflected “a complete disregard for the humanitarian principle of proportionality” and amounted to “the senseless massacre of the Palestinian people.” The winner will succeed António Guterres [who was a total failure], whose second and final term ends on December 31.
• A Paris woman claimed someone was leaving antisemitic graffiti at her home. She was later convicted of staging it herself. Multiple French media reports (Le Parisien, 20 Minutes, Le Figaro and others) identify the woman, Nancy Szejnberg (Nancy S.), as being of Jewish faith. She was convicted of staging the antisemitic graffiti, along with her daughter, in the Paris 11th arrondissement building. 

• Foreign ministers from 12 Arab and Muslim countries condemned Israeli aggression on the Abu al-Duhur Airbase in Syria’s Idlib province (where IDF hit Turkish planes), calling the aggression a dangerous escalation and a blatant breach of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. In a joint statement issued by Jordan’s Foreign Ministry, the foreign ministers of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Algeria, Lebanon, Palestine, Türkiye, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritania, Somalia, and Pakistan voiced deep concern over Israel’s continued aggression on Syrian territory and infrastructure.

• Here is a criminal act that we have seen many times before. The US seized Venezuelan gold from a British bank. According to reports in the newspaper El Nacional, the entire Venezuelan gold reserves – a total of 31 tons – held at the Bank of England will be transferred to the US. The value of these reserves is $4 billion, which means that Venezuela will lose sovereignty over these resources. This is precisely why Iran will never allow the US to enter its territory. Yet some incompetent individuals are labeling Iran a terrorist organization simply because it refuses to allow America to steal its resources – just as it is currently doing in Venezuela and elsewhere. 

• The neo-Nazi nature of the current Ukrainian regime has become so visible that even Polish authorities, who are usually gripped by Russophobia, cannot help but see it, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Ukraine’s open, state-sponsored glorification of World War II-era nationalists who collaborated with Nazis on multiple occasions and were responsible for the ethnic cleansing of thousands of Poles has driven a major wedge between Kiev and Warsaw. Earlier this month, Polish parliament speaker Wlodzimierz Czarzasty said that Ukrainians must “rethink all aspects of their history” and specifically recognize the massacre of Polish civilians at the hands of WWII-era nationalists [led by Stepan Bandera in photo below] as genocide before being greenlit to join EU. “Despite the well-known Russophobia in the politics of Poland, the Polish authorities today are nevertheless paying serious attention to the foundations of current Ukrainian statehood. I mean, first and foremost, the ideology of neo-Nazism,” Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubin in an interview on Sunday. He added that the Polish leadership’s “principled” position on the issue is a reflection of broad-based public demand. 

• Ukraine is beginning to legislate to conscript women to the military. Europe and the UK are reducing financial and other support for Ukrainians who have escaped the war, wanting to force them back for the meat grinder, and Ukraine is unable to field missile defense. Numbers now reveal that near 50% of Ukrainian military are mercenaries mainly from Latin America. In addition, Ukrainian soldiers are active in the Sahel region in Africa. They are the latest version of ISIS.
• Ukraine has once again requested American-made PAC-3 interceptor missiles for the Patriot air defence system from South Korea, but was again rejected, according to the South Korean newspaper The Chosun Ilbo. Seoul responded that it needs these missiles itself in case of an emergency on the peninsula.

• Washington Post: Trump announces tariffs on Canadian vehicles and steel in escalation of trade war. Trump offered no additional details about the levies, but he said they would take effect Jan. 1 — leaving time for the two sides to resume negotiations.

• Global Affairs: One of the world's leading producers of plastics, the US has proposed revising the draft objective of the treaty to reduce plastic pollution by eliminating a reference to an agreed 'approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastics'. The US has sent letters to at least a handful of countries urging them to reject the goal of a global pact that includes limits on plastic production and plastic chemical additives at the start of UN plastic treaty talks in Geneva, according to a memo and communications seen by Reuters. 

• RT: The shakeup in India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday has brought changes to its organizational hierarchy, raising some eyebrows. At least a couple of the big exits can be attributed to the student protests last month over leaks of questions for a national medical entrance test – the biggest challenge Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has faced so far. India, the world’s most populous nation with 1.4 billion people, also has the most young people of any country; the average age is around 29. The government responded to the protests with brutal police violence, stoking public anger – before it caved and sacked Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. The BJP seems to have been guided by the thinking that fresh faces can help it regain trust among the country’s youth. It hopes to do so by meeting them in the social media spaces they prefer, and speaking using their lingo – as certain lawmakers have done in parliament. How that works out will be seen when a number of big states, including Modi’s Gujarat, go to the polls next year.  

Palestinian freshwater springs being seized by Israeli settlers

On a searing summer day, Israeli settlers splashed in a West Bank pool created by siphoning off water that had irrigated Palestinian crops, one of many seizures of water resources across the occupied territory.

The spring served as a lifeline for the nearby village of Fasayil in the fertile Jordan Valley, where Palestinians have relied on it for generations for food, employment and to supplement irregular Israeli supplies to their domestic taps. 

Sunday song

Updates: Trump, China, Russia, Iran, Britain, Ukraine, Turkey, Korea, Cambodia, Sudan & Brazil

CND in Britain last Saturday with protest at RAF Fairford where US bombers are deployed that have been used to attack Iran.

• Trump on Truth Social declares ‘economic warfare and isolation on an unprecedented scale’ against Iran and anyone else worldwide doing business with Iran. The Chinese Foreign Ministry says it does not recognize US sanctions against Iran and that China will not comply with the ‘economic warfare’ campaign initiated by President Trump this week.

• Pepe Escobar on Empire of Chaos, Lies, Plunder, Piracy and Bribes: Mike Pompeo, former aspiring Tony Soprano, admitted: “We lie, we cheat, we steal.” And we bribe. A Transition Protocol source, as we revealed live, is unequivocal: The President of the US – despite having “won” the war on Iran countless times, at least in the Vociferation stakes – made a major attempt to induce IRGC Commander-in-Chief Gen. Ahmad Vahidi and senior Iranian military leadership to break with the government in Tehran through enormous financial inducements. So here we have POTUS playing good ol’ Divide and Rule – which the Brits learned from the Roman Empire – to fracture the IRGC from the inside. This was not a mere exploratory diplomatic contact. Trump did not merely want to determine whether Vahidi supported US-Iran negotiations. According to our source – placed in the tight inner circle of Leader Mojtaba Khamenei – this was a full leadership-buyout operation, modeled on the Venezuela playbook, to fracture the Iranian state. The attempt miserably failed. Because Ahmad Vahidi completely rejected it.

• The Turkish Ministry of Justice has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for Israel's attack on the Freedom Flotilla.
• According to sources from Iraq, the Iraqi Speaker of Parliament & his party are backed by the UAE. The UAE reportedly paid them $100 million in campaign support. A few days ago, the UAE had announced that it cut off all trade, commercial exchanges and financial transactions with Iran, reportedly due to pressure from the US and Israel. In response, the Parliament Speaker of Iran, Ghalibaf, said: “Every step that enemies have taken to drive Iran and Iraq apart, we have taken 2 steps closer together. History will record that we were 2 nations that refused to be footnotes in other people's narratives, and our destiny was not written in the capitals of Western governments.”
• The war has become "more expensive," Ukrainian dictator Volodymyr Zelensky stated. "We need to find the funds. This is the main challenge," he added. 

• Ukrainian dictator Volodymyr Zelensky on more ‘humane’ mobilization: “I am very much looking forward to a more humane and systematic approach to solving organizational issues in the military.” In Vinnitsa, Ukraine, speaking of ‘humane mobilization’, Zelensky’s meat hunters tried kidnapping another ‘Ukrainian patriot’. However, in a stunning twist, passers by strike back with pepper spray and the condemned man lives to see another day. 

• Die Zeit: Since 2022, more than 80 Ukrainian soldiers undergoing training in Germany to participate in the war in Ukraine have fled their training grounds in Saxony-Anhalt alone. Under Ukrainian law, these men are considered deserters. They face up to 12 years of imprisonment in their home country. “Many deserters in Ukraine did not join the army voluntarily; they were conscripted. When they were sent to the Altengrab military training ground in Saxony-Anhalt for training, they took the opportunity to flee,” the publication adds.

• Newsweek: A senior Russian official has warned that Trump's new defense plans, including for the vast Golden Dome missile shield currently in development, will lead to a new space "arms race" and could be "devastating." "The risks of turning outer space into an arena of armed confrontation have ceased to be hypothetical," Gennady Gatilov, Russia's envoy to the United Nations in Geneva, said in remarks reported by Russia's Tass state news agency on Thursday. "Its consequences will be devastating for all of humanity," he added. The Congressional Budget Office—the nonpartisan agency that advises American lawmakers on funding—said in May the "Golden Dome" will cost roughly $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years, far exceeding the initial $175 billion allocated to the project. 

• Pistol Pete Hegseth on ‘controlling space’: Secretary of War Hegseth speaking in Denver, Colorado as part of his recent 'Arsenal of Freedom Tour': “We’re leveraging the best and brightest, the most talented Americans to ensure that we do deliver space superiority and space dominance. We are running as fast as we can on Golden Dome to deliver for President Trump because we must defend our homeland. The fight for space is the fight for the future of the world as we know it. We cannot afford to have a fair fight in space — I’m not interested in orbital equity or orbital parity. We demand orbital dominance plain and simple. Whoever controls space controls the fight.”
• Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s 19–20 August visit to South Korea, the first by a Chinese foreign minister in five years, renewed efforts to strengthen bilateral ties amid tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Beijing and Seoul agreed to accelerate negotiations on the second phase of their Free Trade Agreement and expand cooperation in trade, supply chains, technology, and cultural exchanges. Wang called for South Korea to pursue external relations in an ‘independent, autonomous, balanced and non-conflicting manner’ and urged Washington to change its ‘hostile policy’ towards Pyongyang [North Korea]. China reaffirmed its commitment to peaceful resolution and regional stability; Seoul reiterated the one-China principle. Beijing is considering a Xi–Lee summit at November’s APEC in Shenzhen. 

• Odessa, Ukraine: A woman saved a condemned man from a death sentence by kicking and punching Zelensky’s meat hunters until they fled like the cowards they are. [Don't believe the mainstream media when they say the people of Ukraine want the US-NATO war on Russia to continue.]

• The US is interfering in the Brazilian presidential elections, pressuring the Brazilian electorate into voting for right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of disgraced former president, Jair Bolsonaro. If that does not work and President Lula da Silva secures a fourth term in office, the groundwork is already being laid for a potential military intervention. From sanctions and economic warfare, to coaching influencers and journalists on how best to attack the left-wing government, the Trump administration is doing everything it can to overthrow Lula. 
• The longtime publisher of Stars and Stripes announced he’s stepping down weeks after the Pentagon installed an active-duty Navy captain at the military newspaper, an atypical appointment. Max Lederer, who spent more than 30 years at Stars and Stripes, announced Tuesday he was stepping away after nearly two decades as publisher. His email to staff about his departure included a parting shot at the Defense Department. “It has become clear that my philosophy of leadership, and my understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes, differ in fundamental ways from the direction the leadership of the Department of Defense has for the organization,” Lederer wrote in an email obtained by the Washington Post. He said his retirement is effective Sept. 30.

• As Andy Burnham continues to give Britain’s support to Donald Trump’s global wars, the public continues to feel the effects. So-called “Iran war inflation” is pushing up energy and household bills in Britain, with the Office for National Statistics noting the largest jump in gas prices since 2022. In the Ukraine war, the British government's continued strategy of supporting military escalation is making this devastating conflict even more dangerous. With the CND campaign to shut down US bases in Britain growing, the spotlight next shines on RAF Menwith Hill, near Harrogate, in Yorkshire. Menwith Hill is the largest US overseas spy base in the world, capable of monitoring communications globally. The base is also part of the US’s National Missile Defence system. The system is made up of a global network of bases, designed to enable the US to use its nuclear weapons pre-emptively without fear of retaliation. 

• Phnom Penh Post: The US is seeking to move its renewed defence relationship with Cambodia into a more “operational” phase, with senior officials discussing the revival of joint military exercises, expanded training and military reforms. In addition, Washington has signaled renewed interest in further US naval visits to the strategically significant Ream Naval Base. Minister of National Defence Tea Seiha met with US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby on August 15, as Washington seeks to deepen military-to-military engagement after years of strained defence relations. The US has shifted away from overt color revolution in Cambodia and now prefers participating in the nation-state-building process in an attempt to pull Cambodia away from China.     

• Yves Engler: Add Sudanese to Ottawa’s list of expendable people. Twenty-eight years ago today the US bombed a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant causing tens of thousands of deaths. Canada’s backing for that war crime and ongoing support for UAE highlights Ottawa’s indifference to Sudanese lives. Canadian officials defended the illegal August 20, 1998, US bombing of the Al- Shifa pharmaceutical facility in Khartoum. Washington claimed the plant produced the deadly nerve agent VX. It didn’t. In a rare move, CIA analyst Mary O’Neil McCarthy sent a letter to President Bill Clinton expressing doubts about the factory’s ties to chemical weapons production or Al Qaeda. “Eventually,” reported the New York Times, “Clinton administration officials conceded that the hardest evidence used to justify striking the plant was a single soil sample that seemed to indicate the presence of a chemical used in making VX gas.” One employee was killed and 11 were wounded when US cruise missiles blasted through the factory. The Al-Shifa plant produced half of Sudan’s medicines and most of the country’s supplies of chloroquine, the standard treatment for malaria. The resulting lack of medicines is believed to have led to tens of thousands of preventable deaths.  

Comparing NY City and Tehran subways

 

the funnies

Exclusive: How Trump tried to bribe the head of the IRGC

Empire of Chaos, Lies, Plunder, Piracy. And bribes.

By Pepe Escobar

Mike Pompeo, former aspiring Tony Soprano, admitted: “We lie, we cheat, we steal.” And we bribe.

A Transition Protocol source, as we revealed live, is unequivocal: The President of the United States – despite having “won” the war on Iran countless times, at least in the Vociferation stakes – made a major attempt to induce IRGC Commander-in-Chief Gen. Ahmad Vahidi and senior Iranian military leadership to break with the government in Tehran through enormous financial inducements.

So here we have POTUS playing good ol’ Divide and Rule – which the Brits learned from the Roman Empire – to fracture the IRGC from the inside.

This was not a mere exploratory diplomatic contact. Trump did not merely want to determine whether Vahidi supported U.S.-Iran negotiations.

According to our source – placed in the tight inner circle of Leader Mojtaba Khamenei – this was a full leadership-buyout operation, modeled on the Venezuela playbook, to fracture the Iranian state.

The attempt miserably failed.

Because Ahmad Vahidi completely rejected it.

The Trump administration had already created a somewhat direct conduit to Vahidi through Nechirvan Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, way back in May 2026. Then-DNI Tulsi Gabbard contacted Barzani – fully authorized by Trump and Vice-President JD Vance – and an encrypted connection to Vahidi was subsequently established through Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The channel stayed dormant – or in coma, for nearly 3 months. This time though Trump attempted to turn the channel into a de facto fracturing of the Iranian leadership, employing the conceptual precedent in Venezuela: isolate the central command; handsomely bribe those immediately around it for “cooperation”; and create the internal conditions for regime decapitation.

The source describes “billions of dollars” being waved as inducements to several members of the senior IRGC leadership through Vahidi. All that while Trump was on Hardcore Vociferation mode threatening Tehran and spinning his “control” of the Strait of Hormuz.

Nothing so far has been independently confirmed in public. And probably will not. But that does not mean the source is not credible.

The source is part of Leader Mojtaba’s tight inner circle; heard all about it directly from Vahidi; and later was fully authorized to disclose the extremely sensitive information to Pakistani mediators, especially Field Marshal Asim Munir, who Trump keeps calling virtually every day asking for “help” getting the Iranians back at the negotiating table (when he in fact blew up the negotiating table).

I bribe, therefore I am

Vahidi is not a peripheral military figure. Far from it: he is the commander of the IRGC – the institutional center of gravity of Iranian hard power. The Trump administration wanted access to the top of the IRGC itself.

But they bet on the wrong man. The number two man in Iran right now, overseeing everything including top IRGC decisions, is Mohsen Rezaee: the new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and personal representative of Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

Mohsen Rezaee is a former IRGC commander and his leadership is uncontested – as proven by the trust placed in him by the Leader. The overarching framework guiding his decisions – and people like Vahidi – is the Shi’te sense of moral duty, ethics, self-sacrifice and the spirit of Sovereign Resistance, values completely alien to an Empire of Grifters.

It’s no wonder that a crass neo-Crassus in War-a-Lago/Washington actually believed that a battle-tested military leader – and those around him – could sell the fate of a civilization-state for a mere bribe, and induced to defect, stand aside or facilitate regime change.

Applying the exact same Venezuela methodology means that the Trump administration actually believed they could translate it to a Shi’ite Iran context. That proves once again an astonishing degree of cultural stupidity.

The methodology may work for corrupt Latin American political/military elites: History tells us it happened so many times.

But to believe that offering protection, political survival, loads of money and/or a future share of the spoils to an IRGC that is far from being a loose political entourage around a vulnerable presidential palace fully demonstrates how the Empire of Grifters has no clue about the institutional cohesion of the Iranian security state.

All across the Global South, this will be regarded for what it is: another episode of the neo-Crassus Art of the Deal.

Complementing another recent episode, where the capo fraternizes with the DPRK then asks South Korea – “I asked for $10 billion” – for protection money.

That’s the pizzo. Not to be confused with pizza. Pizzo is Sicilian slang for extortion money.

Mafia, piracy, bribing, extortion: talk about a flexible Empire at work.

~ Pepe Escobar is an Independent geopolitical analyst, writer and journalist.  

Our next monthly coalition rotating protest in Maine

Join us if you can. This spot at the foot of the Wiscasset bridge on US Hwy 1 is a tourist magnet where we will see license plates from all over the country and people from around the world.

Now more than ever we need to be as public as possible about our resistance to endless war$ and the genocide US-Israel are perpetrating on Palestine (Gaza & the West Bank), Lebanon, Yemen and across the African continent.

We've been holding these monthly protests at busy traffic spots all over Maine - north & south, east and west since early 2022.  

Our demands:      

•     End U.S. aid to racist apartheid Israel
•     Stop US-Israeli wars for 'Greater Israel' on Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, & Syria        
•     U.S. hands off Latin America & Caribbean (Cuba, Venezuela, Columbia, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Haiti)     
•     Peace in Ukraine - No weapons, no money for the Ukraine War         
•     Abolish NATO/No expansion into Asia Pacific         
•     Fund people’s needs, not the war machine         
•     Stop Pentagon climate crimes         
•     Fight racism & bigotry not war        
•     End AFRICOM         
•     No new arms race in outer space

Co-sponsors: 

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Maine Natural Guard, PeaceWorks of Greater Brunswick, Communist Party of Maine, Maine Green Independent Party, Citizens Opposing Active Sonar Threats (COAST), Party for Socialism & Liberation Maine, Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, Veterans for Peace - National, United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights (MVPR), and Diaspora Pa’lante Collective. 

Cleaning up Havana with solar

Havana has a garbage problem. El Rampeño has a solar-powered solution.

Meet the Cuban initiative using renewable energy to collect garbage with tricycles in the face of fuel shortages caused by the U.S. oil blockade.