Guille Bervejillo

Asad Haider’s work hugely impacted my thinking on race, capitalism, identity politics. His book Mistaken Identity cut through noise at a loud moment in these debates, a clarifying intervention at a moment rife with distraction. I interviewed him in 2018. thedigradio.com/podcast/mistak…

""All our biographies are unfinished,' Asad wrote in a 2021 essay on Stuart Hall, 'and will remain so long after we are gone.' Because of the ripple effect he created Asad's biography is still being written." legacy.com/us/obituaries/…

The latest from our new think tank, the Whirlwind Institute: Senior research associate Guille Bervejillo writes about the what we can learn from the life of Uruguay’s former president Pepe Mujica. Great lessons for inside-outside politics! jacobin.com/2025/10/pepe-m…

Former Uruguayan president Pepe Mujica, who made international headlines for his humble living conditions: “I am living like the majority of people in my country. Otherwise you end up being swayed by how you live.” 📰: jacobin.com/2025/10/pepe-m…

@facardozo Aca meti un cuento que me contaste !

My small tribute to Pepe Mujica: jacobin.com/2025/10/pepe-m…

What we can learn from the life of Uruguay’s former guerrilla and leftist president Pepe Mujica. jacobin.com/2025/10/pepe-m…

@RnaudBertrand They are working to accomplish something very similar in biotech with new soy strains: #abstract" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

Here's a question I know many are wondering about: why did China wait until now to use rare earths as leverage against the US? Why not in the first Trump administration when the US started the trade hostilities? Or when the Biden administration unleashed the chips export controls 3 years ago? I just watched a fascinating explanation by a Chinese analyst and, unexpectedly, a big part of the explanation is... helium. I had no idea but as he explains (source here: xiaohongshu.com/discovery/item…), all the way until 2022 China imported 95% of its helium and most of it was controlled by the US. Of the world's ten largest helium producers, four were American companies, and the remaining six all used American technology. Helium isn't just a party balloons gas: it has plenty of industrial applications for things such as quantum computing, rocket technology, MRI machines, as a coolant for chip lithography equipment, etc. In a nutshell what he's explaining is that with helium the US had an even stronger card to play if China ever used the rare earths card. This raised huge alarm bells inside China. In an article published in late 2022 in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science (frontiersin.org/journals/envir…), several researchers from PetroChina’s Beijing-based Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development stressed that China would be greatly affected if the US imposed a “stranglehold” blockade on helium exports. So over the past few years there were gigantic efforts in China to break the "helium shackles," with seven helium extraction facilities going into production, and China also switching imports from the US in favor of imports from friendly countries like Russia. China's research ecosystem also went into overdrive to find solutions to the helium dependency issues, with China's Academy of Sciences awarding its annual 2024 "Outstanding Science and Technology Achievement Prize" to a new helium extraction technology project (english.casad.cas.cn/newsroom/nc/20…) because "these scientific and engineering achievements broke the long-standing monopoly of the US and ensured the security of China's helium resources" (guancha.cn/internation/20…) The result: by the end of 2024 China had cut its helium dependence on the US to less than 5% (scmp.com/news/china/sci…). The "helium shackles" were broken. That's what most people don't realize: power isn't about intentions or rhetoric - it's about what you can actually do. Many wonder why countries almost never retaliate when the US imposes sanctions or export controls. The answer is simple: they can't. They lack the alternatives, the technology, the supply chains. China is the first country that systematically worked to eliminate every single pressure point, with humongous efforts. It's not just helium: it's chips, energy, telecommunication, pharmaceuticals, etc. That's why the rare earth card can finally be played now. Not because China suddenly became aggressive, but because they have developed the capabilities to say "no." Last word: as a European, this is both depressing and inspiring. Depressing because it highlights the immense magnitude of the task at hand to become genuinely sovereign and develop our own capabilities to say "no." Inspiring because China demonstrated that it can actually be done, and relatively fast if we execute competently. Although with the current crop of folks at the helm in Europe, that last part is admittedly a very, very big "if"...

You are not seeing this slaughter live-streamed to your devices because Israel has murdered most of Gaza’s most prominent journalists in targeted assassinations.

So much hurt and outrage are behind this video. The world’s silence as these crimes continue unchecked is unbearable. Free the illegally detained hostages now

@RnaudBertrand Its really not about east v west though. Wang Hui put it best: it is a question of ‘depoliticized politics’. We focus too much on the myth of democracy, and not enough on if a political system actually responds to collective will

I've been having an ongoing debate with someone I know on which system is more likely to produce inept leaders: liberal democracy or the Chinese system. They were always on the liberal democracy side ("wisdom of the people", "transparency during elections", etc. All the usual arguments). Last night they called me after watching Trump's UN speech and their exact words were: "It's true, popular voting can really produce the worst leaders." Anecdotal, sure, but if he sees it I'm sure many others do too. Heck I showed his speech to my 6 and 9 years old daughters at dinner last night and they literally wouldn't believe that he was being serious, they were both convinced it was some form of comedy sketch. Even small kids instinctively understand the absurdity of such a person leading the world's preeminent power. The Chinese system has its limitations - all systems do - and I don't think it's exportable (it's very Chinese in nature), but one of its greatest strengths is requiring leaders to prove themselves through managing progressively larger responsibilities over decades before reaching the top. This totally filters out people who can win popularity contests (or, like Trump, who are extremely skilled at exploiting division and inflammatory rhetoric) but are fundamentally unsuitable for power. The counter-example that people typically give is Mao (although many Chinese see him, and with good reasons, as one of the greatest leaders in their history: x.com/RnaudBertrand/…). But they forget that Mao is NOT a product of this meritocratic promotion system: he is a revolutionary who acceded power through armed struggle. So no matter what you think of him, you cannot judge a system by someone who never went through it. Another common pushback is checks and balance. This argument concedes that liberal democracy can indeed produce terrible leaders but that they supposedly have less freedom to wreak havoc, the system can prevent their worst impulses. Oh really? Tell that to the 4.7 million people estimated to have died from the US's post-9/11 wars (costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/costs/human) - wars which even Americans themselves now agree were unmitigated disasters in all respects. Where was the "checks and balance" for this? Almost everyone was cheering for it. Or listen to Trump: he just claimed that climate change was a "con job" and exhorted everyone to "get away from the green energy scam". This discourse, which Trump not only keeps repeating but transforms in actual policies, was rightly qualified by Noam Chomsky as a "worse threat to humanity than Hitler" (chomsky.info/20201101/) because it threatens human civilization itself. Where's the "checks and balance" for this? Trump is free to implement his policies largely unimpeded, and he is actually convincing millions of people, which does immense damage for all of us collectively. So no, "checks and balance" is simply not a valid argument. Chinese leaders selected by the system, by contrast, haven't as much as started a single war - not one - and Xi Jinping, speaking yesterday via video at the UN, made a landmark pledge to cut China's emissions while exhorting the world to remain "unremitting in actions and unrelenting in intensity" to protect our common home (fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xw/zyx…). Painfully obvious who's the adult in the room. Lastly there's the "leader for life" argument, which again concedes that liberal democracy can produce terrible leaders but that at least you know when they'll be gone. That's a fair point - transition of power imho is indeed the one redeemable feature of liberal democracy. When it works of course, we've all seen the fragility of it... And it's not as strong a point as it sounds if the system is such that those that land in power are consistently bad, or continue their predecessors' bad policies. As Tanzania's Julius Nyerere once quipped: "The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them." In other words, what good does it do when you can change the leader but you always land with the same sort of people? It's merely an illusion of change. Plus on this question the jury is still out wrt the Chinese system: Xi indeed abolished term limits but it doesn't necessarily mean he'll stay in power forever (he's just in his 3rd 5-year term, Angela Merkel for instance served 4 4-year terms), nor that they abolished transition of power - the Chinese system continues to promote and test literally thousands of younger leaders through the same meritocratic ladder to prepare the next generation. All of this isn't done for the purpose of mindlessly praising the Chinese system nor for the purpose of exhorting other countries to adopt it (which again I think is not possible as it's so intrinsically Chinese) but simply to encourage people to move past surface-layer ideological assumptions and consider what really matters. What matters more: the ritual of voting, or the quality of leadership? How can we change things to ensure we have both? Are we too focused on procedures and process as opposed to outcomes? Etc. When even small children can instinctively recognize the absurdity of "democratically chosen" leaders, perhaps it's time to ask ourselves some questions.

Recibí mensaje urgente de @davidrkadler coordinador de la @ProgIntl . Anoche la #GlobalSamudFlotilla que lleva ayuda humanitaria a Gaza recibió múltiples ataques con bombas incendiarias y químicas que fueron lanzadas desde drones en mares territoriales de Creta. Urge el apoyo internacional para proteger su preciosa carga y las personas que la transportan con el objetivo de aliviar y visibilizar en algo la hambruna genocida impuesta por Netanyahu en Gaza. Desde la flotilla piden a la UE protección en sus aguas territoriales y un rechazo a los ataques de Israel. #GlobalSumudFlotilla

Imagine for a single moment if the shoe had been on the other foot, with a commando of North Korean soldiers: - Invading the US homeland in the middle of the night for the purpose of spying on White House communications - Getting found by a boat of Maine fishermen - Massacring them all gratuitously and puncturing their lungs so their bodies sink at the bottom of the ocean There's no doubt the US would declare war within hours. But here's the thing - this scenario sounds like absurd fiction because it is. Even the countries we're taught are "evil" - like North Korea - would never contemplate such an act. Only the US, and Israel, are doing this sort of stuff routinely. And what compounds the cruelty is their pride in it - boasting to journalists about the operation as if it were a Hollywood thriller, never once expressing regret or remorse for the innocent fishermen they murdered, whose bodies their families can't even retrieve. "Why do they hate us", you ask? You'd hate them too if they did to your civilians what you routinely do to theirs. Heck, you're taught to hate them even when they don't do anything to you.

🚢 The Global Sumud Flotilla—the largest civilian mission to break Gaza’s siege—launches today, with 50+ ships from 44 countries. Drop Site editor Alex Colston is on board and will be reporting live as it sails from Barcelona toward Gaza.

Meet the New Centrist Democrat Copying Zohran Mamdani This is incredible @heycappello

i can hear the ChatGPT typing in real time

Every mass email in 2025: ✨ improve outcomes 📣 uplift voices 💡new ideas📍Zoom 🗓️Tuesday, 2–3pm. 🤣

BREAKING 🇺🇾 President Pepe Mujica has passed away. From the @ProgIntl, we celebrate his life and leadership of the @Frente_Amplio, and send our deepest condolences to his family and friends across Uruguay.

🟡 Pepe Mújica

Hasta siempre, Pepe. 🌹 #Luto #Mujica #PepeMujica #PTBrasil