Yhdysvallat

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Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: A handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.

“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.

“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.

As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.

Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, but that is only a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?hp

Haisee niin Stasille että.... :maija::lanssi:

"The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon," writes whistleblowing hero Edward Snowden, surprising no one who has been paying enough attention in the past few years.

We've been saying this for years now ourselves. The time is coming when the gentle prodding of the USSA imperial police state will become a naked mugging with overt threats of violence and kidnapping.

http://activist-post-forum.947009.n3.nabble.com/How-the-Government-Uses-Citizenship-as-a-Weapon-Against-You-tp4026369.html;cid=1372756570142-64

CIA whistleblower to Snowden: ‘Do not cooperate with the FBI’

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/cia-whistleblower-to-snowden-do-not-cooperate-with-the-fbi/47533/

Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser – a key American foreign policy architect (Zbigniew Brzezinski) – wrote in 1970:

The [future] era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/07/top-experts-have-warned-for-50-years-that-mass-surveillance-would-lead-to-tyranny-in-america.html

France wants to delay the ‘biggest bilateral trade deal in history' by 2 weeks after learning the USA was allegedly tracking economic communications of EU member states.

"It would seem wise to us to suspend them for a couple of weeks to avoid any controversy and have the time to obtain the information we've asked for," French government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said Wednesday.

The trade agreement negotiations, which could potentially be a key factor in reversing the slow economic climate, are set to commence Monday in Washington DC.

http://rt.com/news/france-us-delay-trade-603/

 

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The secretive FISA court which operates in the background has not only given its approval to such incursions on Constitutional rights but has created a body of new law out of thin air to justify its actions, to the tune of 100 pages of new laws.

Those new laws deal largely with surveillance. But this new body of law has tended to spill over into other areas as well, without the knowledge of the public, and without any input from citizens. The court hears only one side of these issues — the government side. And so far the court has approved each and every request submitted by the government.

http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/secret-court-creates-100-pages-of-new-law-hidden-from-public/49947

NSA Circulated Soldiers' Sex Talk with Wives for Kicks
http://12160.info/page/nsa-circulated-soldiers-sex-talk-with-wives-for-kicks?xgs=1&xg_source=msg_share_page

The head of the Senate’s foreign policy body on Sunday called for sanctions against any countries that elect to offer shelter to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who currently faces charges in the U.S. for leaking classified documents related to the NSA’s potential overreach in collecting information against American citizens.

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/07/07/2261771/menendez-snowden-sanctions/

 

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In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government documents.

The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/09/196211/linchpin-for-obamas-plan-to-predict.html

 

[Pantherapardus]

In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government documents.

The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/09/196211/linchpin-for-obamas-plan-to-predict.html

Pohjois-Koreassa on käytössä samankaltainen järjestelmä.

 

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Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.

The documents show that:

• Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;

• The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;

• The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;

• Microsoft also worked with the FBI's Data Intercept Unit to "understand" potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;

• Skype, which was bought by Microsoft in October 2011, worked with intelligence agencies last year to allow Prism to collect video of conversations as well as audio;

• Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport".

The latest NSA revelations further expose the tensions between Silicon Valley and the Obama administration. All the major tech firms are lobbying the government to allow them to disclose more fully the extent and nature of their co-operation with the NSA to meet their customers' privacy concerns. Privately, tech executives are at pains to distance themselves from claims of collaboration and teamwork given by the NSA documents, and insist the process is driven by legal compulsion.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

 

[ctg]

In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government documents.

The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/07/09/196211/linchpin-for-obamas-plan-to-predict.html

Pohjois-Koreassa on käytössä samankaltainen järjestelmä.

 

[ctg]

Berlin police are investigating a light artist for projecting the phrase "United Stasi of America" onto the the US Embassy in Berlin. The phrase refers to the former East German secret police and was meant as a protest against American spying. But can the artist really be prosecuted?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/united-stasi-of-america-artist-wanted-by-berlin-police-a-910818.html

A June Gallup poll [showed that Congress] had a 10% approval rating [while] and one in March that showed North Korea with a 12% favorability rating among Americans.

That’s nothing…

We’ve previously documented that the U.S. Congress is less popular among the American people than cockroaches, lice, root canals, colonoscopies, traffic jams, used car salesmen, Genghis Khan, Communism, BP during the Gulf oil spill, Nixon during Watergate or King George during the American Revolution.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/Congress_Is_Less_Popular_than_North_Korea_/27362/0/0/0/Y/M.html

Why Aren't Americans Fighting Back?

This is the big question, right? It's what people are wondering everywhere.

The answer is simple and plausible - but the explanation is a bit more complicated. The majority of Americans are suffering terribly from the current economic crisis, but they do not yet have a political self-identity that will allow for a successful fightback. They don't know who they are or what they're fighting for. Neither do they understand whom or what they are fighting against.

"If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles . . . if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." These are the words of Sūn Zǐ, a 6th century BCE Chinese general, military strategist, and author of The Art of War, an immensely influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy.

All fighting is the same. Self-knowledge and knowledge of the enemy confer on the fighter the outlines of a winning strategy, based on the best utilization of available weapons of offense and defense.

The majority of Americans, unknowingly, are members of the working class, AKA the proletariat, and will be fighting for the kind of socialism in which sharing, cooperation, volunteerism, and wellness replace the drive for individual profits, competition, ego, and the desire for power over others.

...

Compared to the European and Latin American proletariat, Americans lack political savvy. One reason is that in Europe and Latin America, when the going got tough, the working class had to stay put, organize, and fight back. By contrast, in the US, when the going got tough, individuals and families just picked up and moved West. Now however, there is no more out West, no wide-open spaces to flee to to make a living, and we on this continent are now forced by circumstances - the global capitalist crisis of overproduction - to stay and fight back.

American workers don't really want to fight. We don't want trouble or violence. We just want to live our lives in peace with a reasonable level of prosperity. It's easier to simply sit by the fire and munch on a drumstick. But when that nasty cave bear tries to enter, that's the time for everyone to get angry and grab the weapons. And when the entire clan stands in unison - in solidarity - ready and able to defend itself, violence is averted because the bear gives up and runs off.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/17498-why-arent-americans-fighting-back

 

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[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GDFIVVmXE-g[/video]

While some current members of Congress continue to rally for the prosecution of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, a long-serving United States senator has sent a letter of support to the NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower.

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/senator-to-snowden-you-have-done-the-right-thing/50854/

 

[ctg]

With the European Parliament getting prepared to launch an investigation into the massive National Security Agency surveillance programs, whistleblower Edward Snowden, NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander and journalist Glenn Greenwald may be called to testify.

The series of hearings on the recently revealed NSA surveillance programs is slated to begin in September, which was established after the agency’s global spying efforts were revealed in June.

The fallout in Europe has been quite significant, though Britain and Sweden blocked an attempt to engage in wide-ranging talks on espionage and intelligence between the European Union and the United States earlier this month...

http://www.activistpost.com/2013/07/european-parliament-may-call-on-snowden.html

“The Constitution is suffering.” That was the message sent July 16 by Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

The purpose of the letter was to ask Holder “to get involved personally in assessing the Constitutional issues raised by Microsoft and other companies that have repeatedly asked to share publicly more complete information about how we handle national security requests for customer information.”

http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/despite-participation-in-prism-microsoft-warns-of-threat-to-constitution/51065

President Obama considers cancelling his planned trip to Moscow over disagreements regarding former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, The New York Times reports.

http://rt.com/usa/obama-moscow-trip-cancel-281/

 

[ctg]

Last August, former Marine Brandon Raub was arrested by the Secret Service and FBI, taken into custody and placed in a psychiatric institution where he was told he would be forced to take medication which he did not want. He was freed approximately one week later after a federal judge reviewed his detention and found no probable cause by which to hold him. Raub's plight was taken up by The Rutherford Institute, which is suing the government on Raub's behalf for an unspecified amount. In a May 22, 2013 press release, Rutherford stated:

The complaint, filed in federal court in Richmond, alleges that Raub's seizure and detention were the result of a federal government program code-named "Operation Vigilant Eagle" that involves the systematic surveillance of military veterans who express views critical of the government. Institute attorneys allege that the attempt to label Raub as "mentally ill" and his involuntary commitment was a pretext designed to silence Raub's speech critical of the government and that the defendants violated Raub's rights under the First and Fourth Amendments.

Following Raub's highly-publicized case, Rutherford revealed that hundreds of other military veterans had contacted them to relate similar stories of government intimidation and people "disappearing." Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead stated that "Brandon Raub's case exposed the seedy underbelly of a governmental system that is targeting military veterans for expressing their discontent over America's rapid transition to a police state."

Two days before announcing the civil rights lawsuit, Whitehead expounded on Operation Vigilant Eagle, which was launched by the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice and the FBI to observe "veterans" for alleged signs of "extremism" and "oppositional defiance disorder (ODD)."

http://www.ppsimmons.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/former-navy-seal-tells-of-forced.html

 

[crane]

Land of the free:stä on tulossa hyvää vauhtia samanlainen,kuin NL oli aikoinaan.
Pelottava kehityskulku,jos moinen leviää eurooppaankin!

 

[ctg]

As quoted in the Moscow Times, July 20, 2013, Russia’s chief sanitary inspector, Gennady Onishchenko, has accused the U.S. of producing biological weapons in a Georgia at a U.S. Navy facility that is run in concert with the Georgian government.

The facility, the Center Public Health Reference Laboratory (CPHR), is situated on a former Soviet military base and is located on the outskirts of Tbilisi. Here, the U.S. government is conducting activities in violation of the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention, Onischenko told Interfax on Saturday.

The facility opened amidst much fanfare on March 18, 2011. Andrew C. Weber, the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs, Georgian PM Nika Gilauri and U.S. Ambassador to Georgia, John Bass, were among the officials present at the inauguration of the lab, which is a mere hop from the Tbilisi airport.

The U.S. has invested over 150 million dollars in the lab which, according to the Georgian and U.S. officials, aims at protecting public and animal health through dangerous pathogens detection and epidemiological surveillance.

http://intellihub.com/2013/07/21/russian-official-accuses-u-s-of-biological-weapons-violations/

America No Longer Has a Functioning Judicial System http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/07/america-no-longer-has-a-functioning-judiciary.html

Times sure have changed: it is no longer cool to be a fighter pilot. The Pentagon expects to be short some 200 fighter pilots this year, and is projecting that shortfall will increase to 700 pilots by 2021. Various factors seem to be involved: better paying jobs in the commercial sector with more stability, the stress of repeated overseas deployments, and the threat that ultimately the job they trained to do — fly planes — is being superseded by remotely-controlled drones. With demand for commercial aviators heating up as thousands of pilots are expected to reach mandatory retirement age (65) in the next five years, the Air Force is caught in a quandary. Where are they going to get the pilots to fly their shiny new F-35s?

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fighter-pilot-wanted-20130722,0,2152468.story

 

[ctg]

US soldiers “are at their breaking point,” declared Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday, citing the impact of multiple deployments over more than a decade of continuous US war beginning in 2001.

Though some veterans welcome the acknowledgement, they disagree with Hagel’s “solution”—focused on beefing up the military—insisting that this problem can only be addressed by ending the wars responsible for this trauma.

Speaking at the Veterans of Foreign Wars annual conference in Louisville on Monday, Hagel shared the stories of service members who have faced five or more consecutive deployments that compound their mental traumas and make them freeze up in battle. “When you push human beings this hard, they break,” he stated.

Yet, Hagel—who has been a key force behind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan responsible for these mental health problems—insisted that the solution lies in ‘strengthening readiness’ for further deployments while “address[ing] unsustainable growth in personnel costs, which represent half of the department’s budget and crowds out vital spending on training and modernization.”

http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/hagel-troops-at-a-breaking-point-vets-bring-us-home/52669/

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D – Calif.) cited her oath to “protect and defend” the U.S. Constitution as the reason Congress should enact harsher gun control measures. In a press release marking the one-year anniversary of the Aurora, Colorado shootings, the former Speaker of the House said: “In Congress, there can be no more fitting memorial to the lives lost in Aurora, in Newtown, and across the country than a concerted effort to enact commonsense gun safety legislation.

http://xrepublic.tv/node/4542

 

[ctg]

The numbers tell the story — in votes and dollars. On Wednesday, the House voted 217 to 205 not to rein in the NSA's phone-spying dragnet. It turns out that those 217 'no' voters received twice as much campaign financing from the defence and intelligence industry as the 205 'yes' voters.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/money-nsa-vote/

 

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Yhdysvallat pyrkii aikaansaamaan pelotevaikutuksen tuomitsemalla Wikileaks-sivustolle tietoja vuotaneen Bradley Manningin, Ulkopoliittisen instituutin tutkija Charly Salonius-Pasternak arvioi Yle Uutisille.

- Yhdysvallat haluaa, että heidän salaisuuksiaan ei missään nimessä luovuteta, ja siitä rankaistaan kovasti. Toisaalta he haluavat urkkia kaikkien muiden salaisuuksia, Salonius-Pasternak sanoo.

Salonius-Pasternakin mukaan Yhdysvallat on valmis käyttämään kyseenalaisiakin perusteluja saavuttaakseen tavoitteitaan.

Hän myös huomauttaa, ettei Manningin kohtelu oikeusprosessin aikana ollut hyväksyttävää, vaikka oikeussalissa mentiinkin nähtävästi sääntöjen puitteissa.

- Se miten Manningia kohdeltiin, kun hän oli suomalaisittain sanottuna tutkintavankeudessa, ei mitenkään ole hyväksyttävää eikä mitenkään voi kuulua mihinkään Yhdysvaltain oikeusjärjestelmän osaan

http://yle.fi/uutiset/tutkija_salonius-pasternak_usa_hakee_manning-tuomiolla_pelotevaikutusta/6755910

 

[ctg]

(Reuters) - A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805

 

[baikal]

Tuo Salonius-Pasternak on ihan tolkku kommentoija, monta kertaa tässä vuosien mittaan olen suorastaan myhäillyt tyytyväisenä Pasternakin kannanottoja lukiessani. Mutta....huomio kohdistuu Bradleyyyn, itse asia on SE juttu.

 

[aj77]

Eilen myös toimittaja kommentoi tätä tietovuotaja juttuja siltäkantilta, että ne eivät paljastaneet mitään esim.Kiinaan kohdistuvasta vakoilusta. Se on Kiinan ja muiden tiedossa ollut aina. Sitä vain hyssytellään ja ikäänkuin pelataan aikaa ennen sitä lopullista yhteenottoa joka tulevaisuudessa häämöttää.

Itse ihmettelin kuinka sopivasti tuli Usan tuorein globaali terroivaroitus. Lähetystöt suljettiin ja epäilyksiä kehon sisäisistä räjähteistä ja vaikka mistä...Se al-qaeda on aina siellä missä sitä tarvitaan. Nyt on Nsa ollut helisemässä kansainvälisessä kriisissä,niin kutsutaan al-qaeda apuun ja pelastetaan maailma.

 

[ctg]

Miksi????

According to an official press release from the Organization of Judicial Investigations (OIJ in Spanish), Costa Rica will no longer send cocaine or other controlled substances to the United States, at least for the time being. The announcement comes in the wake of news reports about nearly 24 tons of cocaine transported by the U.S. Air Force to Miami on Saturday, July 27th 2013.

The OIJ further explained that officials in Costa Rica had spoken to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) about the temporary lack of an incinerator to destroy seized powder cocaine, marijuana and other illegal drugs. Prior to the massive airlift of cocaine to Miami in late July, the OIJ had managed to destroy almost 23 tons of drugs over the years at a cement factory in Cartago, but a couple of unfortunate incidents resulted in the stockpiling of confiscated drugs, and the OIJ ended up with too much coke.

http://news.co.cr/costa-rica-will-stop-sending-cocaine-to-miami/24277/

Jotenkin en jaksa uskoa että jenkit siirtäisivät huumeita tuhottavaksi, kun ne voi tuikata tulee missä tahansa krematooriossa taikka voimalaitoksessa, jos niistä halutaan päästä eroon, vaikka maassa itsessään ei olisi huumeiden tuhoamiseen pyhitettyä pönikkää.

Brazil-based Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald said that he had received more than 15,000 secret US government documents from intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.

Greenwald, an American who was among the first to release details of Washington's vast electronic surveillance program, gave no details of the content of the files as he testified before the Brazilian Senate's foreign relations committee.

http://mytechnologyworld9.blogspot.in/2013/08/us-reporter-claims-he-has-huge-cache-of.html

Some analysts and Congressional officials suggested Friday that emphasizing a terrorist threat now was a good way to divert attention from the uproar over the N.S.A.’s data-collection programs, and that if it showed the intercepts had uncovered a possible plot, even better.

- NY Times article from August 2, 2013: Qaeda Messages Prompt U.S. Terror Warning

Nothing about the above quote should surprise any of my readers, we all know the sick, twisted mindset of those involved in the Military-Industrial-Wall Street complex. What’s more shocking is the fact that these folks so openly admit it to the New York Times, albeit in a typical anonymous and cowardly fashion. Let’s not forget what Robert Shapiro, former Clinton official and Obama supporter told the FT in July 2010:

http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/ny-times-admits-al-qaeda-terror-threat-used-to-divert-attention-from-nsa-uproar/53137

The United States has accumulated over $70 trillion in unreported debt, an amount nearly six times the declared figure, according to a new study by University of California-San Diego economics Professor James Hamilton.

The unique aspect of Hamilton’s study is that he examines federal debt that has not been publicly released, specifically the federal government’s support for “housing, other loan guarantees, deposit insurance, actions taken by the Federal Reserve, and government trust funds.”

Since the global economy hit rock bottom in 2008, US federal debt has gone through the roof, increasing from $5 trillion to an estimated $12 trillion in 2013. Meeting the interest payments alone on that debt burden presents a formidable challenge to future US taxpayers: In addition to the debt, Americans must pay back around $220 billion annually just in interest.

http://rt.com/usa/us-debt-study-hamilton-economy-103/

 

[ctg]

President Obama has cancelled a planned pow-wow with Russian president Vladimir Putin at next month's G20 Summit in St Petersburg, saying the granting of asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was "a factor."

"Following a careful review begun in July, we have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a U.S.-Russia Summit in early September," the White House said in a statement.

"Russia’s disappointing decision to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum was also a factor that we considered in assessing the current state of our bilateral relationship."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/07/obama_cancels_meeting_putin_in_russia_says_snowden_a_factor/