France’s ambassador to Canada says Ottawa must choose between tying itself entirely to Washington or broadening its links to partner more with Europe – while also calling out Canada’s “weak” military engagement.
“This nagging question of the future American commitment offers, in any case more than ever, the opportunity for Europe, France and Canada to play a role together,” Michel Miraillet said in a French-language speech Tuesday to the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations.
Miraillet argued that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year was the culmination of a decade of Moscow and Beijing working to weaken democracies.
He said both Russia and China have sold their citizens a narrative of patriotic nationalism, while building up their military capabilities and involvement in developing countries, in anticipation of an inevitable decline of a faltering western world.
“This relationship goes far beyond the assertion of common interests. (Vladimir) Putin and Xi Jinping share the same hatreds, that of the West, which they want to weaken and push back ? and that of democracy, which according to them leads to decadence and the disintegration of nations,” he said.
“They also became convinced of the inevitability of America’s erasure from the international stage.”
Miraillet cited the presidency of George W. Bush, without directly referencing the Iraq War, and noted the Obama administration opting against intervening in Syria or pushing back on Russia’s 2014 takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea region.
“The withdrawal from the world stage, initiated under Obama and amplified under Trump, has proved disastrous, as it created a vacuum quickly filled by the rival powers and opened a field of expansion for Russia,” he said.
“If it was to be feared that Joe Biden would go in the same direction, especially at the time of the panic in Afghanistan, let us agree that he adopted a firm and courageous attitude in the Ukrainian conflict.”
Yet Miraillet warned that all elected leaders are subject to short-term mandates while autocrats remain in power.
“This asymmetry which has always existed between dictatorships and democracies today has a special dimension.”
He said Putin is hoping that Americans elect an isolationist president in fall 2024, and that Europeans opt for the comforts of Russian oil over the difficulty of the higher energy bills they’re paying as a result of sticking to values and democracy.
Miraillet noted France’s recent boost in military spending and proposals for deeper continental military integration. He noted France, which is a major arms producer, is pushing for more military manufacturing on the continent.
He suggested that Ottawa needs to demonstrate a similar commitment to global security.
“The same goes for Canada and its weak defence effort, nevertheless, somewhat forgetful of the memory of its past commitments, of the courage shown in all major conflicts, as in peacekeeping operations.”
In that context, Miraillet said Canada should deepen its partnership with countries such as France, in the same way that Australia has formed alliances with South Korea and Japan.
He said that as today’s world organizes itself along new axes of power, with the China-Russia pact on one side and democracies on the other, the democratic world shouldn’t align itself only with American interests _ those, he said, “are not necessarily always convergent with ours, as with yours, dear Canadian friends.”
“There is, shall I say, a unique opportunity for Canada and France to act together, which involves stepping out of their comfort zone and beyond the games of internal politics to have a great destiny.”
He said “friendshoring,” a U.S. concept recently endorsed by Canada that holds that allies should rely on each other for more resilient supply chains, is “no longer an option.” He added that Canada shouldn’t constrain itself to North American partners.
Miraillet said France, in particular, wants to partner with Canada on critical minerals for green technology, on fledging small-scale nuclear technology and on hydrogen projects that can help electrify public transit.
“France and Canada have no other path than that of closer technological and industrial co-operation, of a strengthened capitalistic relationship in what is not a de-globalization phase as some have said, but more simply a decline in trade on a global scale.”
Navigating that transition requires close friends, in order for multilateral institutions to have any hope of fighting climate change, big tech and pandemics, Miraillet argued.
He said Canada faces a strategic choice, to either “accept and reinforce the logic of American decoupling, hoping to obtain in exchange more integration ? or move toward a more multipolar logic, in particular with Europe.”
Miraillet noted that France and Canada are often the only ones to constantly advocate for individual rights in UN and G20 forums “in the face of Global South, which is culturally often hostile and also increasingly impervious to the interests of the individual.”
Miraillet pointed to Beijing’s sudden suspension of some of the strictest COVID-19 measures on the planet, after sustained public uproar.
“Democracies are superior to all other systems, on one condition: the condition that all concerned citizens can be persuaded to better defend them. The danger is that the refusal of risk, the feeling of comfort and the habits of our Canadian and French societies, blinds us.”
Miraillet started his term in Ottawa last fall, after serving as France’s director general of globalization and as a co-ordinator for G7 and G20 summits, known as a sherpa.
His vision of the world is rejected by Moscow and Beijing, who argue the West has not followed agreements formed after the Second World War to not encroach on local security interests.
NEW YORK (AP) — Teen smoking hit an all-time low in the U.S. this year, part of a big drop in the youth use of tobacco overall, the government reported Thursday.
There was a 20% drop in the estimated number of middle and high school students who recently used at least one tobacco product, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and hookahs. The number went from 2.8 million last year to 2.25 million this year — the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key survey began in 1999.
“Reaching a 25-year low for youth tobacco product use is an extraordinary milestone for public health,” said Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, in a statement. However, “our mission is far from complete.”
A previously reported drop in vaping largely explains the overall decline in tobacco use from 10% to about 8% of students, health officials said.
The youth e-cigarette rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% last year — the lowest at any point in the last decade. E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco products among teens, followed by nicotine pouches.
Use of other products has been dropping, too.
Twenty-five years ago, nearly 30% of high school students smoked. This year, it was just 1.7%, down from the 1.9%. That one-year decline is so small it is not considered statistically significant, but marks the lowest since the survey began 25 years ago. The middle school rate also is at its lowest mark.
Recent use of hookahs also dropped, from 1.1% to 0.7%.
The results come from an annual CDC survey, which included nearly 30,000 middle and high school students at 283 schools. The response rate this year was about 33%.
Officials attribute the declines to a number of measures, ranging from price increases and public health education campaigns to age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers selling products to kids.
Among high school students, use of any tobacco product dropped to 10%, from nearly 13% and e-cigarette use dipped under 8%, from 10%. But there was no change reported for middle school students, who less commonly vape or smoke or use other products,
Current use of tobacco fell among girls and Hispanic students, but rose among American Indian or Alaska Native students. And current use of nicotine pouches increased among white kids.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama man was arrested Thursday for his alleged role in the January hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account that led the price of bitcoin to spike, the Justice Department said.
Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, is accused of helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing the hackers to prematurely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post claimed “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”
But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products,” Gensler wrote, calling the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.
Authorities say Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department says.
Prosecutors say after Council returned the iPhone he used for the SIM swap, his online searches included: “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”
An email seeking comment was sent Thursday to an attorney for Council, who is charged in Washington’s federal court with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.
The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day.
Google, Meta and TikTok have removed social media accounts belonging to an industrial plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region aimed at recruiting young foreign women to make drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Posts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were taken down following an investigation by The Associated Press published Oct. 10 that detailed working conditions in the drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which is under U.S. and British sanctions.
Videos and other posts on the social media platforms promised the young women, who are largely from Africa, a free plane ticket to Russia and a salary of more than $500 a month following their recruitment via the program called “Alabuga Start.”
But instead of a work-study program in areas like hospitality and catering, some of them said they learned only arriving in the Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.
In interviews with AP, some of the women who worked in the complex complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. AP did not identify them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.
The tech companies also removed accounts for Alabuga Polytechnic, a vocational boarding school for Russians aged 16-18 and Central Asians aged 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production.
The accounts collectively had at least 158,344 followers while one page on TikTok had more than a million likes.
In a statement, YouTube said its parent company Google is committed to sanctions and trade compliance and “after review and consistent with our policies, we terminated channels associated with Alabuga Special Economic Zone.”
Meta said it removed accounts on Facebook and Instagram that “violate our policies.” The company said it was committed to complying with sanctions laws and said it recognized that human exploitation is a serious problem which required a multifaceted approach, including at Meta.
It said it had teams dedicated to anti-trafficking efforts and aimed to remove those seeking to abuse its platforms.
TikTok said it removed videos and accounts which violated its community guidelines, which state it does not allow content that is used for the recruitment of victims, coordination of their transport, and their exploitation using force, fraud, coercion, or deception.
The women aged 18-22 were recruited to fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia. They are from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive also is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.
Accounts affiliated to Alabuga with tens of thousands of followers are still accessible on Telegram, which did not reply to a request for comment. The plant’s management also did not respond to AP.
The Alabuga Start recruiting drive used a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.
Videos also showed them enjoying Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports. None of the videos made it clear the women would be working in a drone manufacturing complex.
Online, Alabuga promoted visits to the industrial area by foreign dignitaries, including some from Brazil, Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso.
In a since-deleted Instagram post, a Turkish diplomat who visited the plant had compared Alabuga Polytechnic to colleges in Turkey and pronounced it “much more developed and high-tech.”
According to Russian investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some pupils at Alabuga Polytechnic are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.
Videos previously on the platforms showed the vocational school students in team-building exercises such as “military-patriotic” paintball matches and recreating historic Soviet battles while wearing camouflage.
Last month, Alabuga Start said on Telegram its “audience has grown significantly!”
That could be due to its hiring of influencers, who promoted the site on TikTok and Instagram as an easy way for young women to make money after leaving school.
TikTok removed two videos promoting Alabuga after publication of the AP investigation.
Experts told AP that about 90% of the women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work in drone manufacturing.
