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Monday, December 29, 2025

‘It’s getting worse year after year’: Could water from Hungary’s thermal spas save arid farmland?

By Justin Spike with AP

Published o 29/12/2025 - EURONEWS

These volunteers are on a mission to save the Great Hungarian Plain from desertification.

Oszkár Nagyapáti climbs to the bottom of a sandy pit on his land on the Great Hungarian Plain and digs into the soil with his hand, looking for a sign of groundwater that in recent years has been in accelerating retreat.

“It’s much worse, and it’s getting worse year after year,” he says as cloudy liquid slowly seeps into the hole. ”Where did so much water go? It’s unbelievable.”

Nagyapáti has watched with distress as the region in southern Hungary, once an important site for agriculture, has become increasingly parched and dry. Where a variety of crops and grasses once filled the fields, today there are wide cracks in the soil and growing sand dunes more reminiscent of the Sahara Desert than Central Europe.

Oszkár Nagyapáti, farmer and member of the volunteer water guardians group, holds water in his hands in Kiskunmajsa, Hungary, 29 July 2025. AP Photo/Denes Erdos

What's behind Hungary's emerging 'semiarid' region?

The region, known as the Homokhátság, has been described by some studies as semiarid - a distinction more common in parts of Africa, the American Southwest or Australian Outback - and is characterised by very little rain, dried-out wells and a water table plunging ever deeper underground.

In a 2017 paper in European Countryside, a scientific journal, researchers cited “the combined effect of climatic changes, improper land use and inappropriate environmental management” as causes for the Homokhátság's aridification, a phenomenon the paper called unique in this part of the continent.

Fields that in previous centuries would be regularly flooded by the Danube and Tisza Rivers have, through a combination of climate change-related droughts and poor water retention practices, become nearly unsuitable for crops and wildlife.

Oszkár Nagyapáti, farmer and member of the volunteer water guardians, stands in a hole in Kiskunmajsa, Hungary, 29 July 2025. AP Photo/Denes Erdos

‘Water guardians’ are on a mission to save the region

Now a group of farmers and other volunteers, led by Nagyapáti, are trying to save the region and their lands from total desiccation using a resource for which Hungary is famous: thermal water.

“I was thinking about what could be done, how could we bring the water back or somehow create water in the landscape," says Nagyapáti. "There was a point when I felt that enough is enough. We really have to put an end to this. And that's where we started our project to flood some areas to keep the water in the plain.”

Along with the group of volunteer “water guardians”, Nagyapáti began negotiating with authorities and a local thermal spa last year, hoping to redirect the spa's overflow water - which would usually pour unused into a canal - onto their lands. The thermal water is drawn from very deep underground.

Hills of sandy terrain are visible in the Kiskunsag region of Hungary, 30 July 2025. AP Photo/Denes Erdos

Could thermal water be used to mimic natural flooding?

According to the water guardians' plan, the water, cooled and purified, would be used to flood a 2.5-hectare low-lying field - a way of mimicking the natural cycle of flooding that channelising the rivers had ended.

“When the flooding is complete and the water recedes, there will be 2.5 hectares of water surface in this area," Nagyapáti says. "This will be quite a shocking sight in our dry region.”

A 2024 study by Hungary’s Eötvös Loránd University showed that unusually dry layers of surface-level air in the region had prevented any arriving storm fronts from producing precipitation. Instead, the fronts would pass through without rain, and result in high winds that dried out the topsoil even further.

Artificial flooding could also create a microclimate

The water guardians hoped that by artificially flooding certain areas, they wouldn't only raise the groundwater level but also create a microclimate through surface evaporation that could increase humidity, reduce temperatures and dust and have a positive impact on nearby vegetation.

Tamás Tóth, a meteorologist in Hungary, says that because of the potential impact such wetlands can have on the surrounding climate, water retention “is simply the key issue in the coming years and for generations to come, because climate change does not seem to stop.

"The atmosphere continues to warm up, and with it the distribution of precipitation, both seasonal and annual, has become very hectic, and is expected to become even more hectic in the future,” he says.

Members of the water guardians group talk next to an artificial lake in Kiskunmajsa, Hungary, 12 December 2025. AP Photo/Denes Erdos

‘Immense happiness’: Water guardians put plans into action

Following another hot, dry summer this year, the water guardians blocked a series of sluices along a canal, and the repurposed water from the spa began slowly gathering in the low-lying field.

After a couple of months, the field had nearly been filled. Standing beside the area in early December, Nagyapáti says that the shallow marsh that has formed "may seem very small to look at it, but it brings us immense happiness here in the desert.”

He says the added water will have a “huge impact” within a roughly 4-kilometre radius, "not only on the vegetation, but also on the water balance of the soil. We hope that the groundwater level will also rise.”

Water floods an area and an artificial lake in Kiskunmajsa, Hungary, 29 July 2025. AP Photo/Denes Erdos

Hungary has appointed a drought task force

Persistent droughts in the Great Hungarian Plain have threatened desertification, a process where vegetation recedes because of high heat and low rainfall. Weather-damaged crops have dealt significant blows to the country’s overall gross domestic product, prompting Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to announce this year the creation of a “drought task force” to deal with the problem.

After the water guardians' first attempt to mitigate the growing problem in their area, they said they experienced noticeable improvements in the groundwater level, as well as an increase of flora and fauna near the flood site.

Szilárd Zerinváry member of the volunteer water guardians group walks his horse in his parched backyard in Kiskunmajsa, Hungary, 28 July 2025. AP Photo/Denes Erdos

The group, which has grown to more than 30 volunteers, would like to expand the project to include another flooded field, and hopes their efforts could inspire similar action by others to conserve the most precious resource.

“This initiative can serve as an example for everyone, we need more and more efforts like this," Nagyapáti says. "We retained water from the spa, but retaining any kind of water, whether in a village or a town, is a tremendous opportunity for water replenishment.”

Sulfuric Acid Spills Into Houston Ship Channel

The BWC chemical tank terminal just off the ship channel in Jacintoport, center (Courtesy Google / Maxar / Vexcel / Airbus)

Over the weekend, a ruptured pipe spilled an industrial quantity of sulfuric acid into the water at a chemical terminal on the Houston Ship Channel, according to local officials in Channelview, Texas.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, the BWC Terminals facility in Channelview sustained a leak, releasing one million gallons of sulfuric acid. Part of that spill went into the water, but most went into a containment area on shore, the terminal said in a statement to local media.

At a press conference Saturday, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo told reporters that it appears that a catwalk at the site had collapsed and ruptured a pipe connected to an acid tank. Sheriffs' deputies added that it was a six-inch supply pipe, and that the leak started at about 0200 and continued until about 0600 hours, according to KTRK.

Two people were briefly hospitalized with breathing problems, but have since been released. The crews of two nearby berthed merchant ships were also evaluated. There were no effects on traffic in the ship channel, Judge Hidalgo said.

Air quality was unaffected, she said, and environmental monitoring is planned to determine effects on aquatic life. So far, no impacts have been reported.

BWC is a leading tank terminal operator in North America, with about two dozen sites and a wide variety of services. The largest share of its infrastructure is along the Gulf Coast, including five sites on the Houston Ship Channel and Galveston Bay. The Saturday incident occurred at its Jacintoport terminal, located in a small harbor just off the main ship channel.

NOAA: Higher Temps and Less Ice in a Changing Arctic

[By Matthew Druckenmiller, Rick Thoman and Twila Moon]

The Arctic is transforming faster and with more far-reaching consequences than scientists expected just 20 years ago, when the first Arctic Report Card assessed the state of Earth’s far northern environment.

The snow season is dramatically shorter today, sea ice is thinning and melting earlier, and wildfire seasons are getting worse. Increasing ocean heat is reshaping ecosystems as non-Arctic marine species move northward. Thawing permafrost is releasing iron and other minerals into rivers, which degrades drinking water. And extreme storms fueled by warming seas are putting communities at risk.

The past water year, October 2024 through September 2025, brought the highest Arctic air temperatures since records began 125 years ago, including the warmest autumn ever measured and a winter and a summer that were among the warmest on record. Overall, the Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the Earth as a whole.

For the 20th Arctic Report Card, we worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an international team of scientists and Indigenous partners from across the Arctic to track environmental changes in the North – from air and ocean temperatures to sea ice, snow, glaciers and ecosystems – and the impacts on communities.

Together, these vital signs reveal a striking and interconnected transformation underway that’s amplifying risks for people who live there.

A wetter Arctic with more extreme precipitation

Arctic warming is intensifying the region’s water cycle.

A warmer atmosphere increases evaporation, precipitation and meltwater from snow and ice, adding and moving more water through the climate system. That leads to more extreme rainstorms and snowstorms, changing river flows and altering ecosystems.

The Arctic region saw record-high precipitation for the entire 2025 water year and for spring, with the other seasons each among the top-five wettest since at least 1950. Extreme weather – particularly atmospheric rivers, which are long narrow “rivers in the sky” that transport large amounts of water vapor – played an outsized role.

These wetter conditions are reshaping snow cover across the region.

Snow and ice losses accelerate warming, hazards

Snow blankets the Arctic throughout much of the year, but that snow cover isn’t lasting as long. In 2025, snowpack was above average in the cold winter months, yet rapid spring melting left the area covered by snow far smaller than normal by June, continuing a six-decade decline. June snow cover in recent years has been half of what it was in the 1960s.

Losing late spring snow cover means losing a bright, reflective surface that helps keep the Arctic cool, allowing the land instead to be directly warmed by the sun, which raises the temperature.

Sea ice tells a similar story. The year’s maximum sea ice coverage, reached in March, was the lowest in the 47-year satellite record. The minimum sea ice coverage, in September, was the 10th lowest.

Since the 1980s, the summer sea ice extent has shrunk by about 50%, while the area covered by the oldest, thickest sea ice – ice that has existed for longer than four years – has declined by more than 95%.

The thinner sea ice cover is more influenced by winds and currents, and less resilient against warming waters. This means greater variability in sea ice conditions, causing new risks for people living and working in the Arctic.

Arctic sea ice concentration in September 2025, during its annual minimum extent at the end of summer, was much smaller than the 1979-2004 median extent. The shades of blue reflect the concentration of sea ice. NOAA and CIRES/University of Colorado Boulder.

The Greenland Ice Sheet continued to lose mass in 2025, as it has every year since the late 1990s. As the ice sheet melts and calves more icebergs into the surrounding seas, it adds to global sea-level rise.

Mountain glaciers are also losing ice at an extraordinary rate – the annual rate of glacier ice loss across the Arctic has tripled since the 1990s.

This poses immediate local hazards. Glacial lake outburst floods – when water that is dammed up by a glacier is suddenly released – are becoming more frequent. In Juneau, Alaska, recent outburst floods from Mendenhall Glacier have inundated homes and displaced residents with record-setting levels of floodwater.

Glacier retreat can also contribute to catastrophic landslide impacts. Following the retreat of South Sawyer Glacier, a landslide in southeast Alaska’s Tracy Arm in August 2025 generated a tsunami that swept across the narrow fjord and ran nearly 1,600 feet (nearly 490 meters) up the other side. Fortunately, the fjord was empty of the cruise ships that regularly visit.

Record-warm oceans drive storms, ecosystem shifts

Arctic Ocean surface waters are steadily warming, with August 2025 temperatures among the highest ever measured. In some Atlantic-sector regions, sea surface temperatures were as much as 13 degrees Fahrenheit (7.2 Celsius) above the 1991-2020 average. Some parts of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas were cooler than normal.

Arctic sea surface temperatures are much warmer today than in past decades, as this map and chart of August 2025 sea surface temperatures shows. NOAA and CIRES/University of Colorado Boulder.

Warm water in the Bering Sea set the stage for one of the year’s most devastating events: Ex-Typhoon Halong, which fed on unusually warm ocean temperatures before slamming into western Alaska with hurricane-force winds and catastrophic flooding. Some villages, including Kipnuk and Kwigillingok, were heavily damaged.

As seas warm, powerful Pacific cyclones, which draw energy from warm water, are reaching higher latitudes and maintaining strength longer. Alaska’s Arctic has seen four ex-typhoons since 1970, and three of them arrived in the past four years.

The village of Kipnuk, shown on Oct. 12, 2025, was devastated by ex-Typhoon Halong. The storm displaced at least 1,500 people from across western Alaska. Alaska National Guard

The Arctic is also seeing warmer, saltier Atlantic Ocean water intrude northward into the Arctic Ocean. This process, known as Atlantification, weakens the natural layering of water that once shielded sea ice from deeper ocean heat. It is already increasing sea ice loss and reshaping habitat for marine life, such as by changing the timing of phytoplankton production, which provides the base of the ocean food web, and increasing the likelihood of harmful algal blooms.

From ocean ‘borealization’ to tundra greening

Warming seas and declining sea ice are enabling southern, or boreal, marine species to move northward. In the northern Bering and Chukchi seas, Arctic species have declined sharply – by two-thirds and one-half, respectively – while the populations of boreal species expand.

On land, a similar “borealization” is underway. Satellite data shows that tundra vegetation productivity – known as tundra greenness – hit its third-highest level in the 26-year record in 2025, part of a trend driven by longer growing seasons and warmer temperatures. Yet greening is not universal – browning events caused by wildfires and extreme weather are also increasing.

Summer 2025 marked the fourth consecutive year with above-median wildfire area across northern North America. Nearly 1,600 square miles (over 4,000 square kilometers) burned in Alaska and over 5,000 square miles (over 13,600 square kilometers) burned in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

Permafrost thaw is turning rivers orange

As permafrost – the frozen ground that underlies much of the Arctic – continues its long-term warming and thaw, one emerging consequence is the spread of rusting rivers.

As thawing soils release iron and other minerals, more than 200 watersheds across Arctic Alaska now show orange discoloration. These waters exhibit higher acidity and elevated levels of toxic metals, which can contaminate fish habitat and drinking water and impact subsistence livelihoods.

In Kobuk Valley National Park in Alaska, a tributary to the Akillik River lost all its juvenile Dolly Varden and slimy sculpin fish after an abrupt increase in stream acidity when the stream turned orange.

Arctic communities lead new monitoring efforts

The rapid pace of change underscores the need for strong Arctic monitoring systems. Yet many government-funded observing networks face funding shortfalls and other vulnerabilities.

At the same time, Indigenous communities are leading new efforts.

The Arctic Report Card details how the people of St. Paul Island, in the Bering Sea, have spent over 20 years building and operating their own observation system, drawing on research partnerships with outside scientists while retaining control over monitoring, data and sharing of results. The Indigenous Sentinels Network tracks environmental conditions ranging from mercury in traditional foods to coastal erosion and fish habitat and is building local climate resilience in one of the most rapidly changing environments on the planet.

The Arctic is facing threats from more than the changing climate; it’s also a region where concerns of ecosystem health and pollutants come sharply into view. In this sense, the Arctic provides a vantage point for addressing the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.

The next 20 years will continue to reshape the Arctic, with changes felt by communities and economies across the planet.

Matthew L. Druckenmiller is Senior Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder.

Rick Thoman is an Alaska Climate Specialist, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Twila A. Moon is Deputy Lead Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder.

The Conversation

The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

Opinion...

Mr Trump, Gaza does not need your ballroom. It needs tents. It needs life.

December 29, 2025

Middle East Monitor

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump depart the State Dining Room of the White House following a press conference in Washington, DC on September 29, 2025. [Stringer – Anadolu Agency]

by Jasim Al-Azzawi

Mr Trump,

You will meet Benjamin Netanyahu. Cameras will flash. Words will be exchanged in polished rooms, polished suits, polished lies. You will talk about “security,” “alliances,” “regional stability,” and all the hollow, sterile phrases that sanitize horror and suffocate truth.

But I want to talk to you about tents.

Not metaphorical tents. Not symbolic tents. Not poetic tents. Real tents. Fabric huts. Plastic roofs. Human shelters. The kind of tents that hang between life and death.

In Gaza, rain does not fall. It assaults. It slashes. It invades. It turns the ground into a grave of mud and disease. Children are sleeping in rags under tarps shredded by storms. Infants wake screaming, not from nightmares, but because their bodies are soaked in sewage. Mothers hold babies wrapped in blankets sodden with foul water and human waste. They whisper prayers into the night air that smells of death. Wind tears at canvas walls while hunger gnaws at their bones.

And the world shrugs.

We were told Palestinian families would receive tents and caravans with every agreement, every deal, every negotiation Israel struck with Hamas. Promised. Documented. Repeated. Lied about.

Those caravans are there. They exist. They stand mere kilometers away — pristine, dry, safe — imprisoned by checkpoints and political indifference. They are not being delivered because the suffering of Palestinians has become a bargaining chip. A tool. A punishment.

And while two million human beings live in filth, drowning in misery, freezing in cruel winter wind, you are planning to build a ballroom. Marble floors. Crystal chandeliers. Velvet drapes. A palace to ego while children cough blood in swamp water.

America — the nation that once claimed to be a moral compass — now walks willingly into contradiction so obscene it cannot stand upright.

Has the United States truly fallen this low? Has its heart calcified past redemption?
Has the “shining city on a hill” dimmed into a glittering tomb?

Mr Trump, Netanyahu promised 600 aid trucks per day. Not as generosity. As a necessity. As a minimum survival. Some days now, there are barely 120 trucks — if Israel allows them at all. Hunger swells. Hospitals collapse. Food rots behind borders while stomachs collapse inward.

You will sit across from Netanyahu. You will look him in the eye.

Will you speak? Or will you bow?

Are you afraid of angering him? To risk access? To disturb the sacrosanct theater of political allegiance? Is the relationship that fragile? Is your courage that conditional? Or is Palestinian suffering simply beneath the dignity of conversation?

History will remember the lie that civilization tells itself: that this is complicated. It is not. It is brutal. It is deliberate. It is man-made.

Do you know what the Greeks once called Arab desert tribes? Saracens — people of the tents.

Look at Gaza now. Zionism has not merely dispossessed Palestinians. It has hurled them two thousand years back into history, stripped them of walls, roofs, identity, security, dignity — and left them to rot in filth that only war and cowardice can create.

But do not romanticize these tents. These are not proud desert shelters. These tents are soaked in excrement. Their beds drip with disease. Their blankets stink of rot. This is not poverty.This is engineered humiliation. This is political cruelty masquerading as policy.

And so I ask you, not as a partisan, not as a critic, but as a man addressing another man whose decisions will echo long after his voice fades:

What are you going to do, Mr Trump?

You live in gilded spaces — towers, mansions, palaces of marble and polished gold. Your life is wrapped in velvet. Gaza is wrapped in sores. And yet, the lives trapped in those tents are no less human than the ones who dine in your ballrooms.

They are pleading for one million tents and 600 caravans. Not tomorrow. Not next month. Now. Their children do not have the luxury of political delay. Their lungs are drowning. Their bones are thinning. Their hope is cracking.

Will you order those caravans through? Will you pressure Netanyahu to open the gates? Will you let those shelters roll forward instead of rotting behind barriers of arrogance and calculation?

Or will you remain silent and let winter finish the work that bombs began?

You have been handed a moment history rarely grants: the power to choose compassion over alliance, humanity over political comfort, moral action over moral collapse.

Redeem something. Redeem anything. Redeem at least one shred of the idea that America can still mean something beyond brute power and selective grief.

Do not tell the world America is strong. Show it is capable of mercy. Do not boast of greatness.
Demonstrate decency.

Let the convoys through. Let the tents rise. Let children sleep dry for once. Let the name “American” mean rescue rather than ruin.

The Palestinians have screamed for decades into a deafening world. Today they scream again:

We need shelter. We need dignity. We need life.

History is watching, Mr. Trump. So are the dead.

OPINION: America’s double game with international justice: When power poses as principle

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Winter rains flood camps, worsening living conditions for displaced Gazans

Issued on: 29/12/2025 - FRANCE24

Rain lashed the Gaza Strip, flooding makeshift encampments with ankle-deep puddles as Palestinians displaced by the two-year war attempted to stay dry in tents frayed by months of use. The flooding came as Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu travelled to Florida to discuss the second phase of the ceasefire agreement with US President Donald Trump.

Sunday, December 28, 2025

Philippines in 2025: a year of crisis, from corruption scandal to South China Sea tension

Deepening political feuds, ex-president Duterte’s ICC arrest and the South China Sea dispute have reshaped the Philippine landscape

Sam Beltran
Published: 28 Dec 2025
SCMP

As the Philippines wraps up a tumultuous year punctuated by colourful barbs thrown across warring political houses, an ongoing corruption scandal surrounding flood control projects threatens to derail President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr’s administration.

Externally, Manila has been embroiled all year in a long-standing territorial row with Beijing in the South China Sea that shows no signs of waning, while also gearing up for the hot seat as next year’s chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

We recap below the headlines for the Philippines in 2025:

Philippine coastguard personnel treat wounded fishermen inside their vessel in the disputed South China Sea on December 13. Photo: Philippine Coast Guard via AP

Water wars
Tensions between the Philippines and China over disputed waters in the South China Sea heightened following Beijing’s announcement in September of the approval of a national nature reserve at Scarborough Shoal, just 124 nautical miles west of Zambales province.

This came a month after a China Coast Guard (CCG) and navy ship collided while the former was trailing a Philippine Coast Guard vessel during a resupply mission in the area.

The row also came to a head this month, as Manila accused CCG ships of firing water cannons at Filipino fishing vessels near Sabina Shoal, which injured three fishermen and caused significant damage to their boats.

Throughout the year, Beijing has taken more assertive measures in its claims over contested waters, deploying two long-range H-6 bombers in March around the Scarborough Shoal.
The Philippines has meanwhile ramped up joint patrols with allies and continued to deepen defence ties, including its reciprocal access agreement with Japan that came into effect in September.

A woman carries a placard during a protest calling for the impeachment of Philippine Vice-President Sara Duterte in Pasay City, Metro Manila, in June. Photo: Reuters

A vice-president’s woes
In February, more than 200 lawmakers at the House of Representatives impeached Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio after signing the fourth impeachment complaint that had been lodged against her.

The charges included her unexplained wealth, the misuse of public funds, the betrayal of public trust, and even allegations of plotting murder after she had threatened to kill Marcos and the first family in November last year.

However, after the House’s articles of impeachment were transmitted to the Senate, which would be required to convene as an impeachment court, then Senate president Francis Escudero maintained it could only begin proceedings after the Congressional recess in June, which sparked criticisms that the chamber was attempting to stall the process.
In July, the Supreme Court blocked impeachment proceedings against Duterte-Carpio but said the complaint might be refiled in February 2026.

Will Duterte become Asia’s first ex-leader convicted by the International Criminal Court?
Rodrigo Duterte’s ICC arrest
Former president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on March 11 by Philippine police and Interpol agents and quickly flown to The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity related to his deadly war on drugs during his administration.

Duterte’s lawyer and family members have maintained that his arrest and detention are unlawful and amount to kidnapping.
In August, his defence lawyer appealed to the court for an adjournment of all proceedings, saying the 80-year-old Duterte was not fit to stand trial – a claim rejected by the ICC medical panel which last week ruled the former leader was well enough to take the stand.

The charges against Duterte cover a total of 76 killings that took place between 2016 and 2018 in the Philippines, with some related to the “war on drugs” that he initiated at the beginning of his presidency in 2016.

People attend a campaign rally of senatorial candidates under the party of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte in Manila on May 8, ahead of the country’s midterm election. Photo: AFP

Clash of the clans
Results of the Philippines’ midterm elections recorded a surge in the youth vote and led to surprise developments, including the Marcos-backed Senate slate winning only half of the chamber’s 12 seats, while staunch Duterte ally and former aide Christopher Go secured re-election with the highest number of votes.
Locally, the Duterte clan maintained its stronghold in its hometown of Davao City, where Rodrigo triumphantly returned to the mayoral seat despite his detention at The Hague, while his son, Sebastian, won as vice-mayor.
Analysts say the outcome of the polls would determine the trajectories of the feuding Marcos and Duterte clans as they wrestle for power in the lead-up to the 2028 presidential election, where Duterte-Carpio has expressed interest in seeking the highest post.

People on a wooden boat make their way through floodwaters in Kawit, Cavite province, south of Manila, in July. Outrage over billions spent in anomalous flood control projects culminated in weeks of protests. Photo: EPA

Corruption outrage

Both Marcos and Duterte-Carpio suffered blows to their performance and trust ratings after an investigation into corruption-linked flood control projects dominated headlines for months, with parts of the Philippines such as Metro Manila hit by serious floods from torrential rains.

The president ordered an investigation into these projects, which revealed the existence of incomplete or substandard work, including phantom projects for nonexistent infrastructure, despite a total budget of 545 billion pesos disbursed for flood control since 2022.

Marcos’ internal investigation further revealed that only 15 out of 2,409 registered contractors hoarded 100 billion pesos worth of the projects, with the remaining 436 billion pesos divided among 2,394 contractors.

The outrage over billions spent in anomalous flood control projects culminated in weeks of protests from church groups, civil society organisations and the public.
The Philippine government has been mounting arrests towards contractors, officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways, as well as suspected lawmakers. Authorities earlier this month arrested the “queen of flood control” Cezarah Discaya, whose construction firms cornered a lion’s share of flood control projects, while an arrest warrant has been issued for former congressman Zaldy Co, who is currently at large.

Former Bamban mayor Alice Guo during a hearing at the Philippine Senate in September 2024. Guo has been sentenced to life imprisonment over her role in setting up a scam centre. Photo: EPA-EFE/Handout

Alice Guo gets life
A Philippine court found former town mayor Alice Guo guilty of human trafficking and sentenced her to life imprisonment over her role in setting up a scam centre, a year after Guo became the face of a lengthy Senate probe over alleged crimes linked to Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos).

The court also ordered the forfeiture of the 6 billion-peso Baofu property that had been linked to Guo, where authorities uncovered evidence of scam and trafficking operations during a raid in March last year.

Observers hailed the conviction as a decisive victory against organised crime, strengthening the government’s hand in dismantling illicit Pogo hubs linked to exploitation and fraud.

Philippine Trade Secretary Cristina Aldeguer-Roque. Photo: Facebook/DTISecretaryCrisRoque

Tone deaf for Christmas

Amid woes by Filipinos over economic hardships attributed to corruption, Trade Secretary Cristina Aldeguer-Roque was criticised for what the public considered to be tone-deaf remarks after dispensing advice on a radio programme that 500 pesos (US$8.50) was enough for a family of four to host a “basic” Noche Buena dinner, the traditional Christmas Eve dinner celebrated in the Catholic-majority country.

Roque’s comments were in reference to her claims that the trade department managed to stabilise prices for the festive season, in line with Marcos’ order to keep holiday goods affordable for consumers.

However, critics said Roque’s comments were far from the on-ground realities that Filipino families faced amid continuously rising prices.

Sam Beltran
Sam Beltran is a journalist based in Manila who has written for publications in the Philippines and around Asia. Her stories explore food, lifestyle scenes, popular trends, and sub-cultures as windows into society and the human condition.

China Changes Everything: A Book Review

by Steve Lalla / December 27th, 2025

A new book edited by Kyle Ferrana, China Changes Everything, bills itself as an anthology by “social justice activists, journalists, and commentators” and brings together chapters about the People’s Republic of China written by prominent left-wing analysts, including Arnold August, Roger Harris, Radhika Desai, Carlos Martinez, Gerald Horne, Lee Siu Hin, Margaret Kimberley, Danny Haiphong, KJ Noh, Sara Flounders, and many more.

The publication covers a comprehensive range of subjects in the ongoing “China debate” and includes chapters on such hot topics as China’s relation to Palestine and China’s foreign affairs policies, its banking and healthcare system, its transportation infrastructure and the rail and air infrastructure that China has helped to build in developing nations, its achievements in green technology and poverty alleviation, China’s military expenditures and aims, its role in the “space race,” its alleged genocide of the Uyghurs, and the status of Taiwan and Tibet, among others.

Public health: China vs. USA
The first entry, written by Sara Flounders and titled “A Fundamental Difference: China—Socialist or Imperialist,” dispels the widespread myth prevalent among Western thinkers (and even among Western Marxists) that China’s economy is essentially capitalist. Flounders contrasts China’s economic system with that of the US and demonstrates how it is the essential differences in their respective economic structures that have propelled China’s economic growth since its liberation in 1949: “In the United States, nearly all resources are privately owned by a handful of billionaires. Even public forests, waters, and raw minerals are ripe for exploitation for private profit. In China, the overwhelming bulk of resources—oil, gas, coal, gold, gems, rare earth minerals, and water are socially owned and used for the development of the whole society.”

This chapter sets the tone for the entire book. The collection of essays functions as a primer for an English-speaking, primarily US-based audience that will allow the reader to contrast the economics, culture, and politics that they are familiar with, on the one hand, with the economics, culture, and politics of the People’s Republic of China. As such, it does not provide a detailed look at what life is like in China for everyday Chinese people, from a Chinese perspective, but instead functions as a guide for Western observers who seek to compare the achievements of the People’s Republic of China with those of the “developed” nations of North America and Europe since World War 2.

For example, Margaret Flowers’ essay on healthcare is titled “If China Can Provide Universal Healthcare, Why Can’t the United States?” The author compares the two healthcare systems and reflects how, in the US, “Hospitals are shuttering essential services such as obstetrics and pediatrics to open more lucrative specialty centers in orthopedics and cardiovascular interventions. Hospitals that don’t turn a profit, especially in rural communities and poor urban areas, are being closed down and either abandoned or converted into commercial spaces.” In contrast, a system that prioritizes public welfare instead of profit is able to provide superior, or at the very least, competitive services for only a fraction of the cost (China spends less than 3% of what the US spends per capita on healthcare).

“The Commonwealth Fund’s 2024 health insurance survey highlights some major failures of healthcare in the United States,” notes Flowers. “They found that only 56% of working-age adults had adequate health insurance. Of those who had health insurance without adequate coverage, 57% ‘avoided getting needed health care because of its cost,’ and 41% of these experienced a worsening of their health condition as a result. 44% of underinsured adults held medical or dental debt. In fact, in the US, medical illness is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy, and about three-fourths of those who go bankrupt had health insurance at the start of their illness.”

Data like this will provide ample ammunition for our conversations with the China-haters who virtually all of us in the West can count among our coworkers, friends, and family. The book continues with this line of thinking, succinctly contrasting the facts of life in the US, Europe, or Canada with those in the People’s Republic, and confirms that the glaring differences exist precisely because China has not followed the capitalist path of prioritizing corporate profit over basic public needs.

“Health outcomes have dramatically improved over the past 76 years” in China, Flowers recounts. “The average life expectancy in China was around 43.5 years in 1950, and rose to almost 78 years in 2024. Life expectancy rose by almost seven years between 2000 and 2021, while life expectancy in the United States fell during that same period.”

China and the climate crisis
In a case of projection that is typical of knowledge production in the imperial core, the ubiquitous anti-China smear campaign portrays the People’s Republic as a fortress of smokestacks belching fumes of melting coal and plastic into the air, polluting at levels never seen in human history and ruining the environment for everyone. However, it is fairly common knowledge that China ratified both the Kyoto and Paris accords of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), while the US has never committed itself to either agreement.

In its section on green development, China Changes Everything provides ample details regarding China’s commitment to clean energy and sustainable development. China’s achievements in this realm are driven by the nation’s socialist principles and made possible through centralized planning.

Lyn Neeley, in a chapter entitled “China Outpaces the World in Energy Production and Green Technology,” recalls that China has produced “70% of the world’s electric vehicles (EVs) and 98% of the world’s electric buses”—although we’ll never see them on the road in the West. Because of state aid for green technology, the country produces electric cars at a fraction of their cost in the US, Europe, or Canada (a theme that is repeated throughout comparisons of costs for healthcare, housing, education, infrastructure, the military, etc.).

“Chinese EVs are cheaper and more advanced than EVs made anywhere else,” writes Neeley. “A Chinese EV now costs less than [USD] $10,000 because of the efficient manufacturing processes and an increase in the amount of government subsidies for EVs from [USD] $76.7 million in 2018 to [USD] $809 million in 2023.” Neeley notes that China produces over 80% of the world’s solar panels, is the world’s leading producer of hydroelectric power, accounts for up to 70% of the global wind turbine market, and in 2024 filed more than half of the world’s patents for clean energy.

China and Palestine
In an entry titled “Is China’s Foreign Policy ‘Good Enough’?” Danny Haiphong reflects on another criticism frequently leveled at China, particularly in the wake of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 which approved the US plan for the occupation of Palestine by a UN International Stabilization Force. China did not exercise its capacity to veto this resolution and abstained from the vote, giving rise to a common criticism of China heard in the West, even among purported leftists: that China has not done enough to aid the Palestinian cause.

Haiphong helps to put things in perspective: while the US and its vassal states carry out a livestreamed genocide, providing arms and diplomatic cover to the Zionist regime, “China has used its influence at the United Nations to not only condemn Israel’s brutality and call for an immediate ceasefire, but also to uphold the right of the Palestinian people to armed resistance. In 2024, China hosted a historic summit in Beijing that convened all major Palestinian political organizations with the aim of forging unity toward the establishment of a future Palestinian state.”

When the foreign policy of the People’s Republic of China is compared to that of the United States and its vassals in the imperial core, the differences are stark. “The horrors in Gaza are not of China’s making,” recalls Haiphong. “The US accounts for 70 percent of Israel’s arms imports, and wields a political and diplomatic shield over Israel that is arguably more powerful than that provided to any of its other so-called ‘allies’ around the world. The blame for Gaza’s plight rests at the feet of the US, the West, and of course, Israel. Moving attention away from this is as unhelpful as it is dangerous. Makers of US foreign policy have shown the world time and time again that they are willing to go to any length to protect what they see as their most important military asset in the region. Any unilateral action taken against Israel will be met with serious consequences. While the US empire is in marked decline and unable to arrest the development of a rising China and Global South, it has proven more than capable of spreading chaos and instability. The US and Israel would undoubtedly move to cut China off from the entire region if it were to carry out a boycott of Israel on its own, and the genocide would continue, but under even more hostile global conditions than currently exist. This isn’t to say that a boycott isn’t correct in principle, but to put the onus of responsibility for leading such a boycott on China, a developing country that is itself the target of US sanctions, moves the goalposts away from the US empire.” One only has to look at the economic blockade and recent US bombing of Iran to see how the US might treat China were it to go further in its support for Palestine.

The book is highly recommended for those who seek facts about the economic, political, and cultural development of China since 1949, particularly in comparison to that of the United States and particularly regarding the most hotly debated issues. China Changes Everything provides a wealth of information and constitutes a useful manual for those who seek to dispel the myths about China that are propagated in the imperial core. Most of us are familiar with these often contradictory claims: “China is not socialist,” “China is capitalist,” “China is imperialist,” “China is the worst polluter,” “China is not a democracy,” “China is a Communist dictatorship,” “China only cares about its own development,” “China is a settler colonial Han supremacist nation,” “China is imprisoning dependent nations in debt traps,” “China is exploiting Africa and Latin America,” and finally, “the People’s Republic is not revolutionary.” In doing so, the book outlines a realistic vision for our future and provides hope for those in the West who are often disillusioned with all social and political projects.

Steve Lalla is a Canadian-based journalist, researcher and analyst. His areas of interest include geopolitics, history, philosophy, and cultural studies. Twitter: Steve Lalla. Read other articles by Steve, or visit Steve's website.

Distinguishing Chinese Countermeasures from US Sanctions

by Kim Petersen / December 27th, 2025

On 26 December, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) announced countermeasures against US military-related companies and senior executives.

Most western mass media has been referring to China as imposing sanctions rather than countermeasures, but the distinction is important.

The US uses sanctions offensively, as a punitive measure to achieve its desired aims.

An early objective of the US was to prevent recognition of a Communist China, so the US embargoed the PRC at its inception in 1949. This aim lasted until 1972.

It was the first of many sanctions to be imposed on the PRC. After the Mao era, came a propaganda blitz about a Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. The US again imposed an embargo (a broader, severe form of sanction).

Later, disinformation emerged about a genocide being persecuted against Uyghurs in China spread. US sanctions were once again applied.

There are several instances of US sanctions being applied against China, including over Xizang (Tibet), Hong Kong, etc.

However, the US does not apply the so-called rules-based order to itself. It arrogates the right to judge and sanction actions abroad that it considers inapplicable to itself (it rejects the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, and in 1986 it ignored the finding of the International Court of Justice that the US was guilty of “unlawful use of armed force” and ordered to pay “reparations for damages to person, property and the Nicaraguan economy…”) or its allies (it is nign impossible to imagine the Trump administration acknowledging a genocide in Palestine or even stopping its supply of weaponry for the prosecution of said genocide).

China is rising, and the US economy is heading in a precarious direction. The US response to this has been to ditch its support for free trade. Faced with a stern competitor, the US has not sufficiently upped its game. It has resorted to erecting roadblocks to free trade and persuading its vassals to deny China access to technology; i.e., a win-lose relationship. China has, nonetheless, stepped up its game. It has continued to research and develop, innovate, develop supply chains, and establish domestic independence to evade unfair trade practices. Contrary to the West, China emphasizes win-win relationships with its trade partners.

Taiwan as a Red Line

However, China does have an inflexible red line, and this red line pertains to the One-China principle: “The one-China principle has a clear and unambiguous meaning，i.e. there is but one China in the world, Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China.” One hundred and eighty-three countries adhere to the One-China principle, including the US. Although the US has agreed to the “clear and unambiguous” One-China policy (it does not agree with the wording of One-China principle), it holds to a position of “strategic ambiguity,” purportedly to deter a military clash between the PRC and its province of Taiwan.

The US Department of State spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, stated on 12 August 2025: “The United States is committed to preserving peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

Supposedly then, the sale of a $10 billion arms package to Taiwan, announced by the US State Department on 17 December 2025, should serve the two purposes to which the US is pledged: (1) the One-China principle/policy and (2) preserving peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

This is clearly problematic on both fronts. First, the One-China principle/policy is being violated by making a sale to a province without the approval of the capital Beijing. Second, what bona fides does a serial warring nation like the US have to command credulity to preserve peace? In just 2025, the administration of the US’s self-declared “peace president” has bombed Yemen, Iran, Somalia, Venezuela, Nigeria and is fully complicit in the genocide in Gaza.

Conclusion

The US’s sanctions are distinctively different from the countermeasures employed by China. The US’s sanctions are offensive, meant to punish any entity the US declares to be an enemy, to kill, act as sanctions of mass destruction,¹ or carry out a genocide,² even though that costs half-a-million children’s lives.

On the other hand, China’s countermeasures are non-lethal, defensive, and designed to protect it from the sanctions imposed on it and also from US meddling in its domestic affairs.

Finally, claiming peaceable US intentions toward the PRC and its province Taiwan are implausible given its historical record with the PRC and Taiwan, its historical record with the rest of the world, and the historical record of the establishment of the US through the genocide and dispossession of its Indigenous Peoples.³

ENDNOTES:

1
John Mueller and Karl Mueller, “Sanctions of Mass Destruction,” Foreign Affairs, 78:3 (May-June 1999): 43-53. Available at JSTOR.
2
See Abdul Haq al-Ani and Tarik al-Ani, Genocide in Iraq: The Case against the UN Security Council and Member States (Clarity Press, 2012).
3
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2014).

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Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Read other articles by Kim.

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