Albert Pinto

Defiant, Dispirited, Despondent. Without illusions but not disillusioned. Focus on Climate, Inequality, Development. Twitter threads turn into Polycrisis essays

[Albert Pinto @70sBachchan]

Laws are like Sausages. Best not to see how they are made. @tedfertik & I dug into how IRA was made & what we found about US political economy

How did the worlds largest oil & gas producer do green investments? Hint: China
Watch: https://t.co/ZqWhYsD9ES
https://t.co/dfnxRYAP70

[Mark Blyth @MkBlyth]

Remember how 'Build Back Better' was doomed until it came back as the 'Inflation Reduction Act?' Want the inside story on how that happened? Join me Friday at Noon EST for a talk by two insiders on that deal @70sBachchan and @tedfertik - link to follow

[Fox News @FoxNews]

WATCH: President Trump cracks a joke about America's commitment to defending India as long as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is still leading the country:

REPORTER: "Can you speak to the defense relationship between India and the United States?"

TRUMP: "If anybody attacks that man, we're going to be there. Now if there's a new leader, I'm not sure about it."

"If they're attacked and he's the leader, we're going to be there to help."

[Philippe Lemoine @phl43]

He is just stating reality, while hawks insist on ignoring it, talking as if you could permanently remove ~15% of the global supply of oil and nothing bad would happen.

Once again, I understand that the turbo-Zionist team and their neocons acolytes are fine with destroying the world economy if there is a chance that it might bring the IRI down, but the reality is that nobody else is and no US president was going to piss off the entire world just to make them happy.

They should frankly be thankful that Trump went as far as he did, because again no other US president before him did and none after him will.

[The_Greek_Muse @The_Greek_Muse]

@SogdiMoschino 🔥 massive heart attacks on the population, this is a biological warfare ☣️🧬🧪
We must turn the alarms on 🚨⚠️

[Anu Kayanov 🇹🇯 🌲 @SogdiMoschino]

the Iranian phenotype is doing things to female & gay Twitter that missiles and drones did not do to Tel Aviv.

[Jonathan Shainin @jonathanshainin]

A New Magazine With Political Heft, and ‘Real Style’ –  the NYT on the launch of @Equatormag.

[Adam Johnson @adamjohnsonCHI]

Hey man Trump seems to have realized what a huge mistake he made and now wants to stop digging on behalf of the paranoid fantasies of zionist ideologues. Sounds like behavior that should be encouraged rather than literally the only other option (more bombing, economic collapse)

[Seaver Wang @wang_seaver]

“Certain commodities stand out as both particularly capital-intensive and particularly dominated by Chinese producers: titanium, rare earths separation, rare earth metal refining, and battery-grade nickel and cobalt processing.”

[Seaver Wang @wang_seaver]

The relative lack of new critical minerals processing in high-income countries stems from a high capital cost feedback. High capital costs depress internal rate of return, disincentivizing projects. Growing lack of plant development experience and technical know-how, over decades, worsens the CAPEX problem. 🧵

We find a rough decreasing relationship between metallurgical plant CAPEX/ton and the share of global production ex-China and ex-Russia.

The most powerful policy solution is low-cost debt finance.

New guest piece for @TheBTI from Matt Helligg—a metallurgical industry engineer—myself, and @RyanAlimento.

[Pistachio 🇮🇷 🇵🇸 @HarleyShah]

The US didn't want to let the Iranian football team in the country because they were afraid all the women would leave with them

[Addis Standard @addisstandard]

News: #US solar manufacturers seek tariff probe into imports from #Ethiopia

The petition, filed Tuesday with the U.S. Department of Commerce, alleges that companies including TOYO Co., Ltd. and Origin Solar Manufacturing are using Chinese-made wafers to manufacture solar cells in Ethiopia before assembling them into solar panels in Ethiopia or Vietnam for export to the United States.

The allegations come three weeks after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed inaugurated major solar manufacturing facilities at Hawassa Industrial Park as part of Ethiopia’s push to expand renewable energy production and industrial manufacturing capacity.

https://t.co/kfjG91k1wF

[Philippe Lemoine @phl43]

Hawks are melting down and accusing Trump of betrayal, but the reality is that no US president before him had been willing to follow Israel's lead on Iran like he did and no US president will after him.

They shot their shot and missed, but instead of accepting it and updating their views on what is possible given existing political and economic constraints, they will embrace a "stabbed in the back" narrative.

[Policy Tensor @policytensor]

I told you Iran will write off Hamas but not Hezbollah etc. I anticipated the Trump-Bibi breakup. But I failed to anticipate the big cash upfront. Now that the US has put down full sanctions relief and all this cash, there opens up the distinct possibility that the Iranians may not want to allow Israeli shenanigans from derailing the signing of the MOU and even a final agreement if the US is actually good for its word.

[Albert Pinto @70sBachchan]

Trump on Modi (2026): "He is like an angel"
US on Modi (2005): "The US embassy has revoked a visa for the Hindu-nationalist chief minister of Gujarat, citing his role in 2002 religious riots in the western state that killed hundreds of Muslims."
https://t.co/DXjxd8BBvC

[Albert Pinto @70sBachchan]

Trump on Modi: "He is the most beautiful looking man.
He looks so nice, he is like an angel"

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Trump is now ranting about how Modi "is the most beautiful looking man" and "looks so nice"

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Trump is now ranting about how Modi "is the most beautiful looking man" and "looks so nice"

[Brad Setser @Brad_Setser]

It is rare for a think tank paper to have any influence in your own country. Even rarer to write a paper (with @SanderTordoir) that ends of reaching (in my case) across the Atlantic!

(Pretty sure I know where this argument comes from ...)

1/

[Policy Tensor @policytensor]

The standards keep deteriorating as the argument proceeds. First we have the fast and loose with the word “estimated” for “months and years.”

Then we have @becca_wasser predict a crunch in interceptor inventories tomorrow but not today. She does not explain how inventories can fail to rise from today to tomorrow. Surely, the minimum inventory sizes are attained right when we stop firing interceptors, which is today, not tomorrow.

The real hooters begin later. “The administration will also have to address Tehran’s missile production.” This makes the title especially funny: “We Just Learned the Limits of American Power.” 🤣

Later still, @AliVaez is wheeled out to say that an MOU without ‘a sustainable deal’ would be ‘a strategic blunder’. We are not told why. I would suggest that the strategic blunder was the decision to go to war against Iran. A sustainable deal is not a decision for either power. It is an outcome of their interaction.

What Ali means perhaps is that it would be foolish for the US to walk away from a nuclear deal at hand. Trump is certainly impatient for a nuclear deal. Hence the attractive offer. The question is whether he can get Congress to deliver full sanctions relief to Iran.

https://t.co/5B3EpHRlws

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

Many will dismiss this clip with Trump as empty talk and self-serving.

But they may miss a deeper message here: Trump is deliberately refuting the very premises of Israel's case against Iran: That Iran is ideological, irrational, and suicidal.

The first two premises eliminate diplomacy and detterence. The last one ensures that the only option the US will have is preventive war.

These are the premises you want in order to force the US into war.

Israel largely succeeded in getting Washington to adopt these assumptions.

It is not a small thing that Trump is directly tearing them apart.

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

Pro-Israel groups deliberately turned Israel into a polarized issue and alienated almost the whole Democratic Party for the sake of a war that turned out to be as disastrous as Obama warned them and is going to end up with a deal that’s worse for them than JCPOA was.