Israel is more committed to protecting civilians in Gaza than Hamas is

 In the realm of international law, the laws of war represent a critical framework for regulating armed conflicts and minimizing harm to civilians. They are designed to strike a delicate balance between military necessity and humanitarian concerns, emphasizing the protection of innocent civilians who find themselves caught in the crossfire. While straightforward on paper, their application in the complex and fraught environment of conflict is challenging.  

The existing conflict between Israel and Hamas has come under scrutiny in the context of these principles. Despite the complex nature of modern warfare, Israel has been making substantial pains (despite Hamas’s best attempts) to ensure the safety of civilians in Gaza while also maintaining its right to self-defense. 

Under the legal definition of the laws of war, two key principles stand out: the principle of distinction and the principle of proportionality. The principle of distinction requires that parties to a conflict must distinguish between combatants and civilians, targeting only the former. Concurrently, the principle of proportionality obliges parties to ensure that the anticipated military advantage gained from an attack is not outweighed by the expected harm to civilians or civilian property. 

One of the remarkable aspects of Israel’s efforts during this operation has been its restraint in the use of force. In the face of an unprecedented attack against its civilians, and while still under rocket attacks from Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north, Israel has shown great care in selecting its targets, prioritizing military assets, and minimizing civilian casualties.  

Israel has taken measures to notify civilians in Gaza about impending strikes, urging them to leave targeted areas for their safety. This is a proactive measure aimed at preventing civilian casualties and fulfilling Israel’s legal and moral obligation to minimize harm to civilians.  

In stark contrast to Israel’s efforts to protect Palestinian civilians, Hamas shows a complete disregard for the safety of its own population. Hamas has forced its citizens to remain in areas that are likely to be targeted, which undermines the fundamental principles that seek to safeguard the lives of non-combatants and places innocent lives in grave danger. Even though Israel is giving civilians time to try and leave, Hamas continues to disseminate its propaganda and lies in order to manipulate its citizens into being human shields. 

Furthermore, Hamas embeds terror assets in civilian areas, such as homes, schools and places of worship. A clear example of these tactics was the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital incident. Hamas and its partners launched missiles from civilian areas, and when the missiles misfired and landed on hospital grounds, they lied and tried to blame Israel (and were somehow believed by the international media).  These actions not only disregard international law but also increase the risk of harm to Palestinian civilians. 

It is essential to acknowledge the inherent difficulties in conflict zones; unintended civilian casualties can occur despite the best efforts to prevent them. However, the intentions and actions of the parties involved are what truly matter.  

Israel is interested in defense, and in protecting its citizens. In fact, the Israeli government has implemented evacuation plans to move its citizens away from areas that might be targeted by Hamas or Hezbollah. So far, the number stands at about 200,000 from both northern and southern borders. 

But Hamas’s intentions are highlighted in its charter: destroy Israel. The world may see them as “freedom fighters” but their actions in fact hurt the Palestinian people far more than they help them. 

Hamas’s attack was not that of a legitimate resistance movement. It was an act of terror against Israel, it was an incitement against its own people, and it was a clear violation of international laws of war.  

Asher Stern is head of operations at the International Legal Forum, an Israel-based network of over 4,000 lawyers and activists combating antisemitism in the international legal arena. 

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4292096-israel-is-more-committed-to-protecting-civilians-in-gaza-than-hamas-is/

Chat GPT, CFA?

 While some are worried that Chat GPT could soon be replacing every job from journalist to juggling coach, one group of people that don't have to worry - yet - are Wall Street's CFAs.

Recently a team at JP Morgan paired with academic researchers to see if ChatGPT could pass the first two levels of the coveted CFA exam, which usually takes humans four years to complete in total, according to Bloomberg.

At least for now, the AI bot isn't able to pass the test. 

In an 11 page report written after the trial, the researchers wrote: “Based on estimated pass rates and average self-reported scores, we concluded that ChatGPT would likely not be able to pass the CFA Level I and Level II under all tested settings. GPT-4 would have a decent chance of passing the CFA Level I and Level II if prompted.”

Researchers, comprising scholars and six individuals from JPMorgan's AI Research group, such as Sameena Shah and Antony Papadimitriou, are at the forefront of this study. In its commitment to equipping finance professionals with current knowledge, the CFA Institute has overhauled its examination syllabus. As early as 2017, the institute declared its intention to incorporate queries on artificial intelligence and big data analysis techniques into its examinations.

Chris Wiese, managing director for education at the CFA Institute, told Bloomberg: “While multiple choice exams and essay questions remain excellent ways to assess learning and understanding in a secure proctored environment, the day-to-day in finance does not present itself only as a series of short, standalone questions.”

He added: “This is why to become a CFA charterholder, we also require 4,000 hours of qualifying work experience, a minimum of two references, a strong moral compass, and, coming soon, the completion of hands-on practical skills modules.”

The company is exploring large-language model technology to aid CFA candidates. Thousands take the three-tiered test regularly, with recipients often dedicating over 300 hours of study per level. Recent years have seen a dip in pass rates, with Level 1's average at 37% this August, down from 43% in 2018.

Level I of the CFA has 180 multiple choice questions, whereas Level II combines case studies with 88 questions. Both language models found Level II tougher. In Level I, ChatGPT and GPT-4 excelled in areas like derivatives and equity, but faltered in financial reporting and portfolio management.

In Level II, ChatGPT lagged behind GPT-4 in alternative investments and fixed income but surpassed in portfolio management and economics. ChatGPT's main errors were knowledge-related, while GPT-4 often made calculation mistakes, the Bloomberg article notes.

The report concluded: “The one error type that GPT-4 makes more frequently than ChatGPT was reasoning errors. It would seem that, along with GPT-4’s greater ability to reason, it has a greater chance of ‘talking itself’ into incorrect lines of reasoning.”

We'll see how long this lasts. Our guess is Chat GPT has replaced half of Wall Street's already useless sell side salespeople analysts by 2025. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/chat-gpt-cfa

Blinken makes unannounced visit to West Bank to meet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas

 U.S. top diplomat Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to the occupied West Bank on Sunday and met with the Palestinian Authority president as he continues a tour of the region amid spiraling tensions over Israel’s war with Hamas.

Blinken and Mahmoud Abbas met in the West Bank city of Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital, on his second visit to the region since Palestinian Hamas fighters launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 240 others hostage.

As Israel continued a campaign of air strikes that Gaza health officials say has killed nearly 9,500 Palestinians, Secretary of State Blinken rebuffed calls for a ceasefire from Arab officials on Saturday after appealing, unsuccessfully, to Israel for more limited pauses to the fighting a day earlier.

As well as seeking to ensure the conflict does not spread in the region, Blinken is trying to kickstart discussions on how Gaza could be governed after the complete destruction of Hamas that Israel says is its aim.

Blinken told Abbas that the Palestinian Authority should play a central role in what comes next in the Gaza Strip, a senior State Department official told Reuters.

“(The) future of Gaza was not the focus of the meeting but the Palestinian Authority seemed willing to play a role,” the senior State Department official added.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Muqata in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Nov. 5, 2023.

REUTERS

The two met for about an hour but did not address the media.

Abbas told Blinken there should be an immediate ceasefire and that aid should be allowed into Gaza, according to spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh.

Blinken said the United States was committed to getting aid into Gaza and restoring essential services there, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a readout of the meeting.

Protesters call for the release of people kidnapped by Hamas during a demonstration near HaKirya base in Tel Aviv, Israel.

NEIL HALL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

“The Secretary also expressed the commitment of the United States to working toward the realization of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Miller said.

Blinken has suggested an “effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority” would make the most sense to ultimately run the strip but admitted that other countries and international agencies would likely play a role in security and governance in the interim.

Abbas’ Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has seen its popularity shrivel amid allegations of graft, incompetence and widely hated security cooperation arrangements with Israel. It is unclear who will succeed the aging and ailing Abbas, 87, a staunch opponent of Hamas.

The foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan said on Saturday after meeting with Blinken that it was premature to talk about the future of Gaza, as they called for an immediate ceasefire to address the humanitarian crisis that has engulfed the strip’s 2.3 million residents.

Blinken argued that a ceasefire would only allow Hamas to regroup, but is trying to convince Israel to agree to location-specific pauses that would allow much needed aid to be distributed within Gaza.

The meeting was Blinken’s second with Abbas since the conflict began, but the first to take place in the West Bank. It was not announced ahead of time and Reuters agreed not to publish details of the trip until it was complete due to security concerns.

Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, already at a more than 15-year high this year, has surged further since the war began, with more than 170 attacks on Palestinians involving Jewish settlers recorded by the United Nations.

Blinken and Abbas “discussed efforts to restore calm and stability in the West Bank, including the need to stop extremist violence against Palestinians and hold those accountable responsible,” Miller said.

https://nypost.com/2023/11/05/news/blinken-visits-west-bank-to-meet-palestinian-leader-mahmoud-abbas/

Bankers Seek Legal Cover After Backing $1.5 Trillion of ESG Debt

 

• Risks are surfacing in the sustainability-linked loan market
• SLL business has mushroomed amid a lack of regulatory controls

Bankers servicing one of the world’s biggest ESG debt markets are now actively seeking legal protections to guard against the potential greenwashing allegations that may be ahead.

In the handful of years they’ve existed, sustainability-linked loans have mushroomed into a $1.5 trillion market. SLLs let borrowers and lenders say that a loan is tied to some environmental or social metric. But the documentation to back those claims generally isn’t available to the public, nor is the market regulated. Lawyers advising SLL bankers say the reputational risks associated with mislabeling such products are now too big to ignore.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-05/bankers-seek-legal-cover-after-backing-1-5-trillion-of-esg-debt

UK interior minister plans to restrict use of tents by homeless

 Britain's interior minister  said on Saturday she would propose new laws to limit the use of tents by homeless people, saying many of them see it as "a lifestyle choice".

In a post on X, Braverman, who is seen as a possible future leader of the governing Conservative Party, said the state would always support those who are genuinely homeless.

"But we cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice," she said.

Braverman argued that unless the government acted, British cities would "go the way of places in the U.S. like San Francisco and Los Angeles, where weak policies have led to an explosion of crime, drug taking, and squalor."

She said there were options for people who did not want to be sleeping rough, and the government was working with local government to increase support.

"What I want to stop, and what the law abiding majority wants us to stop, is those who cause nuisance and distress to other people by pitching tents in public spaces, aggressively begging, stealing, taking drugs, littering, and blighting our communities," Braverman added.

She was criticised by Angela Rayner, the opposition Labour Party's deputy leader, who said on X: "Rough sleeping is not 'a lifestyle choice'," and blamed increased homelessness on 13 years of Conservative government.

Homelessness charity Shelter was also critical of Braverman.

"Let's make it clear: living on the streets is not a ‘lifestyle choice’ - it is a sign of failed government policy," it said on X.

The government's new legislative programme will be outlined in the King's Speech on Tuesday.

In September, Braverman called for a global overhaul of the approach towards immigration, which is likely to be a key issue at Britain's general election expected next year.

That speech was criticised by human rights campaigners, opposition politicians and even some members of her own party.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/uk-interior-minister-plans-restrict-223125722.html

How smartphones are dooming a generation

 Something strange is happening with teenagers’ mental health. In the US, Britain, Australia and beyond, the same trend can be seen: around the middle of the last decade, the number of young people with anxiety, depression and even suicidal tendencies started to rise sharply. Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, noticed a change when students who were brought up with smartphones started to arrive on campus. They were angrier. More fragile. More likely to take offense.

Social media, he concluded, was shaping their view that society is in permanent conflict, which in turn led to ideas about microaggressions and competitive victimhood. All this, he found, was damaging young people’s mental health. He is working on a book, due out next year, and is ready to share his thesis.

We meet in unusual circumstances: over a videolink and in front of an audience at a conference in London. What he says draws gasps and applause from those watching, though his message is quite horrifying.

He argues that the tools of social media are just too sharp for young minds. On digital platforms teens parade themselves, often to an audience of strangers, and this is leading to addiction, paranoia and despair. For girls, the effect is especially acute. “What we’re seeing is a very sharp, sudden change in girls’ mental health all around the Anglosphere and the Nordic countries,” he says. A big change was evident from 2013, when physical friendship groups started to be supplanted by smartphones and online chat. “But you cannot grow up in networks. You have to grow up in communities.”

It is striking that boys who have religion in their lives seem to be less susceptible. “If you’re a kid who’s a religious conservative, on average, your mental health is not really much worse than it was ten years ago. But if you’re a secular liberal girl, you’re probably more than twice as likely to have a mental health problem.” He cites a University of Michigan survey into “self-derogation” — i.e., how likely teenagers are to say they are “no good” or “can’t do anything right.” Figures had been stable for years but started rising sharply ten years ago — except for among boys who identified as conservative and said that religion was important to them.

Faith, it seems, does not help girls as much. Why not? One theory is that girls simply use social media more. But Professor Haidt also thinks they are more likely to buy into what he calls the “three great untruths” of social media. The first is that they are fragile and can be harmed by speech and words. Next, that their emotions, and especially their anxieties, are reliable guides to reality. And finally, that society is one big battle between victims and oppressors. All this, he says, is the subtext to social media discourse.

“It’s what I’ve been calling the phone-based child,” he says. “For all human history, millions of years, all mammals play. Anyone who has had a puppy knows it’s all about play. So we had play dates in childhood, up until around 2010.” In Britain, he says, the number of children who went on real-life playdates then fell sharply. Lockdown, needless to say, didn’t help.

“I’m calling it the great rewiring of childhood… It hit the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand in exactly the same way.” Social media is a bit of a misnomer, he says. It’s no longer about connecting people, but “performing on a platform.” Perhaps this is fine for grown-ups, but not for children, “where they can say things in public, including to strangers, and then be publicly shamed by potentially millions of people… Children should not be on social networks. They should be playing in person. Social media platforms should never be accessed by children until they’re eighteen. It’s just insane that we let kids do these things.”

I ask if he thinks all platforms are equally dangerous; it’s hard to imagine anyone getting up to much mischief on LinkedIn, for example. “TikTok is probably the worst for their intellectual development. I think it literally reduces their ability to focus on anything while stuffing them with little bits of stuff that was selected by an algorithm for emotional arousal. Not for truth.” And if you get your news from social media (which many people do), this can change your view of the world, especially as the algorithms tend to promote the most provocative views.

If asked to choose whether they side more with Israel or Hamas, “the great majority of Americans side with Israel, except for Gen Z, which is split 50-50,” Haidt says. “There was a Twitter thread recently showing how if you look at what people are saying on TikTok, you can understand why. TikTok and Twitter are incredibly dangerous for our democracy. I’d say they’re incompatible with the kind of liberal democracy that we’ve developed over the last few hundred years.” He’s quite emphatic about all of this, almost evangelical. Which makes me think of his 2012 book, The Righteous Mind, in which he argued about the danger of getting too caught up in your own bubble, believing your own spin. Might he be guilty of that here? Might it just be the case, I ask, that there’s less of a stigma around mental health now, so teenagers are far more likely to admit that they have problems?

“But why is it, then, that right around 2013 all these girls suddenly start checking into psychiatric inpatient units? Or suicide — they’re making many more suicide attempts. The level of self-harm goes up by 200 or 300 percent, especially for the younger girls aged ten to fourteen. So no, the idea that it’s just a change in self-report doesn’t hold any water because we see very much the same curves, at the same time, for behavior. Suicide, certainly, is not a self-report variable. This is real. This is the biggest mental health crisis in all of known history for kids.”

Haidt believes that since this crisis translates into suicide and self-harm, it should prompt a robust government response. “How many kids died from Covid? How many from polio? The increased number of suicides since 2010 is so large that I suspect this is among the largest public health threats to children since the major diseases were wiped out.” In Britain, for instance, suicide rates started rising in 2014, up about 20 percent for boys (to 420 a year) and 60 percent for girls (to 160 a year).

What should parents do? They know that if they try to remove their teenager’s smartphone, their child will accuse them of destroying his or her social life. “That’s a perfect statement of what we call a collective action problem,” he replies. “Any one person doing the right thing is in big trouble. But why do we ever let our kids on social media? It’s only down to the dynamic you just said.” New norms are needed, he says. And his book will suggest four.

Rule one, he says: no smartphones before the age of fourteen. And what if they say they’ll be cut off from their friends? “Give them a flip phone. Millennials had flip phones. They texted each other, ‘See you at four at the mall.’ And then they would meet at the mall. Just don’t give a smartphone to your ten-year-old. Wait until fourteen.” Rule two: no social media before sixteen. “If half the kids are not on social media, they actually meet up after school and they do fun things. They’ll become the cool kids.”

His third rule: no phones in schools. “That does not mean keep it in your backpack,” he says. “Otherwise, the kids are going to go to the bathroom. They’ll find ways to get their fix.” And finally: more unsupervised play. “Both of our countries freaked out in the 1990s, locked up our kids because we lost trust in each other. We thought everyone was a child molester or a rapist.” Children and teens could do with six or seven hours each day out of contact with their parents, he argues. Keeping them inside risks more harm than the outside world would pose.

Our conversation ends abruptly as the conference, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, breaks for lunch. The aim of that conference was to discuss important issues that aren’t on the political radar. The Online Safety Bill has just become law but has nothing to say on teen screen time. If Haidt’s theory is even halfway correct, regulation is unlikely to be far behind.

Fraser Nelson is the editor of The Spectator. He is also a columnist with The Daily Telegraph, a member of the advisory board of the Center for Social Justice and the Centre for Policy Studies.

https://thespectator.com/topic/jonathan-haidt-smartphones-dooming-generation/

Short-Selling Debuts in the Philippines After a 27-Year Wait

 

• Average daily stock transaction shrunk nearly 40% in 10 years
• Foreigners may stay in the market with short selling: Monzon

After a nearly three-decade wait, traders will finally be able to short-sell stocks in the Philippines.

A total of 52 stocks and one exchange-traded fund, including all the equities on the benchmark gauge, will be available for short-selling on Monday after regulators signed off on a proposal first made by the Philippine Stock Exchange Inc. in 1996.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-05/philippines-allows-short-selling-in-stocks-from-monday-in-move-to-boost-trading