LIVE (10/1/16) : CASKET OF SENATOR MIRIAM DEFENSOR transferred to Cubao Cathedral.

LIVE: Casket of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago being transferred from Cathedral Grottos to Cubao Cathedral proper

SOURCE: RAPPLER

READ: Cyber warfare: Who is China hacking now?

Hong Kong (CNN)It's the nagging glitch in the US-China relationship that was inevitably mentioned during the first US presidential debate this week between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton -- cyber warfare..

(Or, as Trump put it, "the cyber").

During the debate, Trump questioned whether Russia was indeed behind a series of cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee -- a conclusion that US officials and his election rival have reached.

"She says, 'Russia, Russia, Russia,'" said Trump. "It could be China."

'Cloak-and-dagger to bits-and-bytes'

In the dark world of cyber-espionage, the finger of blame has often been pointed at China.
Earlier this year, China's cyber spies were accused of hacking into dozens of workstations and servers at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Last year, Chinese hacking was blamed for the massive data breach at the US Office of Personnel Management which compromised the data of over 21 million people.

And in May 2014, US federal prosecutors indicted members of the People's Liberation Army(PLA) for cyber-espionage for economic gain.

China has all along denied the allegations of state-sponsored hacking. But analysts say China's cyber operations are an active threat.

"Military intelligence has rapidly moved from cloak-and-dagger to bits-and-bytes over the last fifteen years... and China's no exception to that," says Bryce Boland, Asia-Pacific CTO of FireEye, a cybersecurity firm.

"China has been developing its capabilities within the PLA for a number of years, going back at least a decade. And their capabilities have now also been brought together into a single, strategic organization that is essentially a new branch of the military."

Waging war in the information age 01:03

Shift in behavior

China is of course not the only actor in this era of cyber warfare.

But it has taken a significant step forward with the United States to establish some ground rules in a new domain of conflict with no widely-held norms.

During President Xi Jinping's state visit to the US last year, the China and the US formally agreed not to conduct or knowingly support economic cyber-espionage.

"I think China, after that, has tried to comply with that agreement," says Tong Zhao of the Beijing-based Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy.

"China increasingly realizes it is in China's interests to promote a rule-based system."

And since the agreement, FireEye has observed a significant change in Chinese cyber activity.

"We've seen a shift in behavior since the Obama-Xi agreement. And that shift in behavior has resulted in a decrease in attacks against US and Western organizations for the purposes of stealing their intellectual property," says Boland.

"We've almost seen a pivot towards Asia. We've seen more targeted attacks now focused on information gathering and intelligence collection from countries on the periphery of China -- anyone with a land boundary or involved in a maritime dispute. And that kind of activity is much more focused on intelligence."

Can China fight and win a war? 01:21

China's cyber-spies target Asia

China's cyber-spies are pivoting away from stealing US trade secrets as they move towards gathering intelligence in a region fraught with geopolitical tension.

Take Taiwan, for instance.

Relations with Taipei and Beijing have been tense since the landslide election of Tsai Ing-Wen, Taiwan's first female president. Her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has traditionally leaned in favor of formal independence from China.

After the DPP's election win, its website was compromised and replaced with a spoofed site to collect data on visitors.

And then, there's Hong Kong.

Two years after Hong Kong's pro-democracy "Umbrella Movement," the city's first legislative elections since the mass demonstrations provided a platform for a small but vocal independence movement -- much to the chagrin of Beijing.

Before the election, two Hong Kong government agencies were targeted by cyber-attackers using new malware tools.

According to FireEye, both incidents were the work of Chinese state-sponsored hackers.
"We know those that those attacks were originated from China... they were clearly politically motivated attacks," says Boland.

"The only logical consequence is that they are operated by a group of people who had a political activity to conduct, so we believe they were state-sponsored."

Not all attacks officially sanctioned
But not all hack attacks originating from China have the official red seal of approval.

After an international court ruled that China did not have a historic right to a disputed area in the South China Sea, flight information screens at Vietnam's two biggest airports were hacked to show messages criticizing the Philippines and Vietnam and their territorial claims in the region.

Analyst Tong Zhao is convinced that the Vietnam airport hack was not the work of Chinese state agents.

"We used to assume that China is a country having a very centralized political system -- the central government must be in control of everything. I think that assumption is inaccurate," Zhao says.

And he's right. As powerful as it may be, China is not a single monolith. It's a vast system of many different actors -- military or civilian, state-backed or for-hire.
But China's many cyber actors can come together for a common goal -- to advance China's security interests and its standing in the information age.




SOURCE: CNN

PICK-UP LINE: Miriam's water pick-up lines and leadership tips

Miriam Defensor-Santiago, the feisty, esteemed former senator and public servant from Iloilo, was 71 years old.

.

Tanungin ninyo ang boyfriend o girlfriend ninyo:

Ano ang pinagkaiba mo sa tubig?

Ang tubig iniigib;

Ikaw, iniibig.

Boy: Tubig ka ba? Kasi kung hindi mo ako crush, wala kang taste.

Girl: Eh ikaw, tubig ka ba?

Boy: Bakit?

Girl: Kasi I can’t wait for you to evaporate.

Tinanong ang mga nanay kung ano ang pinapainom nila sa mga anak nila.

Nanay 1: Bonakid, para sa batang may laban.

Nanay 2: Emperador, para sa totoong tagumpay.

Nanay 3: Tubig ng Maynilad, dahil dumadaloy ang ginhawa.

Ano ang sabi ng dagat sa isa pang dagat?

Wala, nag-wave lang siya.

Definition of self-leadership

The simple definition of self-leadership is: “The process by which you influence yourself to achieve your objectives.” In the 2012 book Self Leadership by Bryant and Kazan, this term is defined as: “Having a developed sense of who you are, what you can do, where you are going, coupled with the ability to influence your communication, emotions, and behaviour on the way to getting there.”

Thus, I will summarize the meaning of self-leadership as the modern equivalent of the famous command by Socrates: “Know thyself.”

If you want to examine yourself about self-leadership, the authorities require two skills. According to Bryant and Kazan, these are:

• The first skill is to stop and step back from the things that trigger us to react; because when we react, we are being controlled by the trigger.
• The second skill is to consider our intention, which involves our values and what we are trying to achieve, in order that we can live a life of choice.

Self-leadership, in other words, is coaching yourself. Ask yourself the following questions formulated by the authorities:

• What is it you want to achieve?
• What actions do you need to take to achieve this?
• What are the results of your actions?
• Is this feedback accurate?
• Can I filter the feedback?

Self-leadership questionnaire

The 2002 International Journal of Leadership Studies published a shortened version of the Self Leadership Questionnaire, as follows:

1. Self-goal setting: I establish specific goals for my own performance.
2. Self-observation: I make a point to keep track of how well I’m doing at work.
3. Self-goal setting: I work toward specific goals I have set for myself.
4. Visualizing successful performance: I visualize myself successfully performing a task before I do it.
5. Visualizing performance: Sometimes I picture in my mind a successful performance before I actually do a task.
6. Self-reward: When I have successfully completed a task, I often reward myself with something I like.
7. Evaluating beliefs and assumptions: Sometimes I talk to myself (out loud or in my head) to work through difficult situations.
8. Self-talk: I try to mentally evaluate the accuracy of my own beliefs about situations I am having problems with.
9. Evaluating beliefs and assumptions: I think about my own beliefs and assumptions whenever I encounter a difficult situation.

Improving performance by employee engagement

The 2010 International Journal of Business and Management defines employee engagement as: “The employee’s willingness and ability to help your company succeed, by providing discretionary effort on a sustainable basis.”

What we want to do is to enhance employee engagement by means of self-leadership. Therefore, managers should observe the following procedure:

1. Start it on day one.

1. Start it from the top.
2. Enhance employee engagement through two-way communication.
3. Give satisfactory opportunities for development and advancement.
4. Ensure that employees have everything they need to do their jobs.
5. Give employees appropriate training.
6. Have strong feedback system.
7. Incentives.

The concept of excellence

Self-leadership should lead to excellence. “Excellent” means being superior or being first class. You would think that everyone would want to become excellent. But this is not so. Many Filipinos are happy with “okay na” or “puwede na ’yan.” Sociologists might say that our colonization made us feel inferior as a culture. Economists might say that our lack of pride as a people is connected to our poverty and slow economic growth. Psychologists might say that unlike parents in other cultures, Filipino parents do not really push their children to achieve. Managers may say that the pressure from peers not to excel make employees content to perform like the rest. Perhaps, it is because of all these reasons that many of our organizations have a culture of mediocrity.

Yet we know that with globalization and ASEAN 2015, our organizations will be forced to compete with organizations from other countries who are hungrier, who have a stronger drive to achieve, and who have a stronger will to excel. If we do not step up, what will happen to us? We will be bought out by larger organizations and become slaves in a different form of colonization – an economic colonization that means we will forever become employees and subordinates of other nations.

Notwithstanding our history and economic condition, can we change our culture? Yes, if we concentrate on certain self-leadership practices. First, we must communicate. If we expect excellence, then we need to clearly articulate this when we hire people, in our company values, in our policies, in our goals. At the same time, people need to be evaluated and rewarded for excellence. We should not reward a person with a bonus because he did his job; instead, we should reward people who really excel. At the same time, we need to align our systems and structures to excellence. We should stop hiring people just because we like them. We should also not be afraid of hiring people who are better than us, because if we lead them well, they will make us and our organization better.

We need to promote people not just based on seniority, but based on excellence. Hence, we need training for values. We need to continually train people to become excellent, because the world is fast-changing and an excellent worker today can become obsolete tomorrow. We need to engage and empower our people in the pursuit of excellence, because our leaders, no matter how bright they are, do not have a monopoly of good or new ideas.

Finally, we must practice role modeling. In a country with high power distance, we have a high respect for leaders. Sadly, maybe too high, that we wait to see how our leaders behave before we follow suit. However, this is both an opportunity and a challenge for us leaders – to walk our talk and show people how to be excellent.

Then again, this requires us to practice self-leadership. If we expect our subordinates and peers to be excellent, it should be something that we expect from and demonstrate ourselves, even when we are tired, or discouraged, or afraid, or when no one is egging us, because the person who continually seeks to be excellent every single moment is the person who has self-leadership. Look at Mahatma Gandhi – he did not have formal power, he did not have a loud voice, he was frail looking and did not have an imposing physique. He simply was the change he wished to see and soon others took notice and began following him.

So I leave you today with these two challenges – practice self-leadership and be excellent. Maynilad needs that of you and more importantly, because the country needs that of Maynilad. As the poet wrote:

God Moves in Mysterious Ways

God moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform;

He plants His footsteps in the sea,

And rides upon the storm.

Deep in an unfathomable mines,

Of never-failing skill,

He treasures up His bright designs

And works His sovereign will.

SOURCE: RAPPLER