A series of Home Office proposals could ban protests during the London 2012 Olympic games. In reaction to the longevity and scale of recent Occupy London takeovers of public and private space at St Paul’s Cathedral, Finsbury Square and a former UBS bank, ministers are reported to be drafting legislation loosely based on part 3 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 – paying particular note to restricting tents and “sleeping equipment” for up to 90 days around exclusion zones. Police and “authorised officers” will be allowed to disperse protests quickly. Presumably with “reasonable force”.

Don’t be too shocked or too quick to compare this to Beijing 2008. Then, the Beijing Organising Committee banned all foreign visitors and non-Beijing-resident Chinese from attending, watching or applying for the right to demonstrate in authorised protest zones. Athens had protest zones in 2004. So did the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002.

The reasoning behind these restrictions is always to “preserve the festivity” of the Olympic experience. And security. Always security. In London’s case, security means Britain apparently waives its own rights and customs to allow America to oversee its own security operations, laying on 21,000 private security contractors and enforcing the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006.

That allows police and “enforcement officers” the right of entry to private buildings suspected of contravening legislation on Olympic advertising. This includes: “advertising of a non-commercial nature” and “announcements or notices of any kind” paying particular attention to “the distribution or provision of documents or articles, the display or projection of words, images, lights or sounds, and things done with or in relation to material which has or may have purposes or uses other than as an advertisement”. In other words, protest.

Artist Peter Kennard, noted for overtly political art in a public context says: “The Secretary of State has regulations banning ‘advertising in the vicinity of the Olympics’. How big is a vicinity? Words fail me and because I make public art in the ‘vicinity’ of the Olympics it might be safer for me if both words and images continue to fail me until after the Olympics”.

A London swamped with police, security officers and spy drones might just dampen all the fun. Providing you sing along with the hymn sheet laid on by the Games’ sponsors and ignore the £9.3 billion price tag, you’ll be fine. But if you argue that a corporate agenda and exploitation is being sold under the auspices of uniting the world under sport and “generating jobs”, you might be in trouble.

The proposed legislation and the laws already in place only serve to secure the profits made by those with heavy financial stakes in the Olympic Games. These corporations read like an anti-capitalist wet dream: McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Dow, G4S, BP…. They may bring jobs to an area, but totally undermine the community-building that encourages grass roots businesses and the local relationships and interactions that stem from that.

It’s interesting to note that the Home Office sees protest as a threat. They’re not only worried about homegrown “domestic extremists” with a grudge against capitalism but international groups seeking to use the Olympics as a platform to air their grievances about authoritarian regimes around the world. Syria, China and Bahrain spring quickly to mind. So instead of giving an example of a functioning democracy where everyone gets a voice and can practise free speech, Britain hides dissent in an attic like it’s an invalid child.

The idea that ministers are considering bans on protest off the back of a global Occupy movement further legitimises the idea that these restrictions are directed at those who oppose one of the greatest and most murderous regimes of the world…capitalism.

So here we go. I hate the Olympics. Arrest me.

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This article was first published in the Index on Censorship. Reprinted with permission from the author [ie., me].

Better known as “Jonnie Marbles”, May-Bowles was also ordered to pay £250 costs and a £15 victim fine after pleading guilty to one count of common assault and another count of causing harassment, alarm or distress under Section 5 of the Public Order Act. Of those six weeks, Jonnie will serve three. District Judge Daphne Wickham, handing down his sentence said Jonnie “attended those proceedings with only one intention, to disrupt them”. She had taken into account the “fear” Mr Murdoch must have felt when he did not know the contents of the pie and that the foam “made contact…its greater impact was stopped by the actions of others.”

So here’s the rub. For crimes of comedy, Jonnie Marbles is to spend three weeks in Wandsworth prison. His lawyer, Tim Greaves, called the sentence “excessive” and said they would launch an appeal but that nothing is likely to move on that until after Jonnie has served his time.

Jonnie’s sentence was handed down by the same judge who gave policeman Marcus Ballard 150 hours unpaid work for pushing a teenager through a shop window. She also gave James Allen QC a 12-month suspension for beating his wife over an uncooked dinner. She let off TSG Sergeant Delroy Smellie over hitting G20 protester Nicola Fisher across the face and whacking her in the legs with a baton.

As argued by Jonnie’s lawyer in court “slapstick and pie throwing is a recognised form of protest.” No injury was caused — nor was there any intent to cause it — and there was limited damage to the suit. Jonnie viewed the Select Committee proceedings as a “farce” and he “intended to express his feelings that…Murdoch should be held accountable” for allowing and engendering a culture where News of the World journalists hacking dead girls’ phones was considered acceptable practise.

It’s worth noting that Rupert Murdoch has not supported his prosecution but the Crown Prosecution Service decided to push on anyway. He was initially charged with Section 5 of the Public Order Act, a charge with a maximum penalty of £1000 commensurate with income. Jonnie’s not rich. Shortly before his first court appearance he was dished up the charge of common assault largely on the basis of a single witness statement made by Trinity Mirror journalist Rachael Bletchley. A statement that also noted that, when she noticed her husband was being pied, Wendi Deng knocked over a woman in a grey suit and launched a physical attack on Jonnie that left him with a cut to his nose.

Jonnie’s sentence joins a recent list of deterrent punishments handed down to protestors — mostly for violent disorder. But what seemed to annoy Justice Wickham the most was that Jonnie deigned disrupt the “dignity” of proceedings that were of “huge importance” and that he did so in the Palace of Westminster.

Oh. Like that time in 2004 when two Fathers 4 Justice protestors hit then-Prime Minister Tony Blair with condoms filled with purple powder thrown from the public gallery — in the middle of Prime Minister’s Questions. They were charged with disorderly behaviour. Or when Plane Stupid protester Leila Deen poured green custard over Lord Mandelson’s face over a proposed third runway at Heathrow. She was cautioned.

Whether you agree with Jonnie’s actions on 19 July or not, the message sent at Westminster Magistrates Court was clear. Don’t do it. If you want to exercise your right to protest and take your dissent beyond the tapping grumble of the internet, consider the consequences of your actions. Just like those who cut public services to boost the private sector and hack voicemails to sell newspapers.

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This article was first published on the Index on Censorship, 03 August 2011.

“Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police.”

That was Sunday. The swell of internet-driven murmuring rage brought Project Griffin’s 33-word definition of anarchism and its appeal to dob in your Chomsky-reading neighbours to front page news on the Guardian.

Twitter tweeps retweeted shortened URLs prefixed with disbelief and Facebook folk guffawed about handing themselves in to Belgravia police station. Here was a document from the Metropolitan Police that, in one dinky box decorated with clip art, pushed McCarthyism to the local businesses and public institutions the newsletter went out to. The reds under your bed were back. But this time they wanted a smaller state. No state. A bigger society. A Big Societ…oh. Erm.

Queue the crash of arguments pointing out that the likes of Alan Greenspan, the American Tea Party and David Cameron are proponents of smaller states and stateless societies. Running alongside that is the Orwellian scenario of thought crime. Because you are an anarchist, you should be reported as dangerous. You are here being mentioned alongside Anders Breivik –– the bad man who killed all those people in Norway. You are here mentioned alongside terrorism. It says so. Right here.

Within 24 hours, police issued a climbdown blaming bad wording. “The Metropolitan Police service does not seek to stigmatise those people with legitimate political views. People purporting to be anarchists have caused criminal damage this year to business premises, and government buildings in Westminster. The message we were trying to convey was to gather information on criminal acts to help us prevent crime and bring offenders to justice.”

Here was a document that seemed to have copied and pasted its definition of anarchism from the first line of Wikipedia. Here was a document that, on the same page, asked people to report all sightings of a yellow dot topped with Arabic script as an Al-Qaeda symbol and misspelled “beach volleyball”. Like a badly designed school handout that’s gone a bit wild with a text box, it would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so serious.

Okay. It’s still laughable. But the subtext of their climbdown isn’t. It’s nose-on-face clear that policing priorities lie in the protection of commercial interests and business. Project Griffin is a “product” for raising “awareness of crime and terrorism issues within the business community”.

Opening a document by declaring the UK’s threat level from international terrorism as “substantial” in bold red letters and closing it with the mantra “if you suspect it, report it” in a bright red box cements paranoia. What the Counter Terrorist Focus Desk has done is equate anarchism with terrorism –– a calculation that criminalises a philosophy. By doing that, they have engendered fear. And to do that is an act of terrorism.

As threatening as the word seems, anarchy is rooted in unwavering optimism because it trusts individuals to come up with ethics and freedoms collectively. At the heart of the myriad of anarchist philosophies is a fundamental belief in fairness.

What Project Griffin has taught the wider public is that there is a section of the establishment with dangerously simplistic views of politics. It is the section concerned with running around the yard like a dog barking at anything that moves in the name of vigilance.

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This article was first published on the Index on Censorship, 02 August 2011

A major survey show of his work has opened at London’s Lisson Gallery joining his first public installation at Somerset House — “Circle of Animals”. As one of the leading cultural figures of his generation, Ai is a political artist in work and in deed. With work that juxtaposes the antiquity and craft of Chinese culture with modern techniques and multimedia platforms, his work has a voice that resonates through histories.

From a junkyard assemblage of domestic doors made from pristine slabs of marble to Han Dynasty vases covered in bold industrial paint to a marble CCTV camera pointed into the streets of London, the Lisson’s compilation of Weiwei’s work from the past six years shows the activism in his art and the artistry in his activism.

Wheatpasted on the walls outside the gallery are words from Ai himself:

“Liberty is about our rights to question everything.”

“Say what you need to say plainly and take responsibility for it.”

“Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo and to seek new potential.”

“Words can be deleted, but the facts won’t be deleted with them.”

The Lisson’s founder and director Nicholas Logsdail argues that Weiwei’s work “has become politicised because of his position. The genius lies in politically gentle forms that are open to interpretation — only when you look into what constitutes the work can you see he’s rebaptised antiquity with a message.”

In the days of the Young British Artists, established galleries like the Lisson and larger institutions like Tate and the Guggenheim were depoliticised. Should political art be shown it was obfuscated beneath layers of visual rhetoric or in historical retrospectives where the immediacy of the message passed its dateline. Thanks to Ai Weiwei and his disappearance at the hands of his own state, an art world already politicised by funding cuts is speaking out. We’ve all become agit-prop. Tate Modern stencilled “Free Ai Weiwei” across the top of its building. Anish Kapoor dedicated his Leviathan sculpture in Paris to Ai Weiwei. Bob and Roberta Smith held a reading of names to remind people that dozens of other artists, writers, and supporters of free expression have either been detained or gone missing at the hands of the Chinese. The Guggenheim has launched an online petition for his release and the Lisson is inviting all visitors to its show to be photographed with a “Free Ai Weiwei” placard that will be broadcast on the internet. There is no scope to be subtle when freedom is at stake.

Greg Hilty, the Lisson’s curatorial director, said that after Weiwei’s disappearance there was “no question” of whether to continue with the show. “Ai Weiwei consistently places himself at great risk for his art. We are showing that his art and activism goes beyond China. He’s an example for social criticism and free expression around the world. To Weiwei, there are no sacred cows.”

Logsdail says: “If you don’t support Ai Weiwei, you’re mental. Freedom to express yourself is what it means to be an artist.”

Believing in total transparency, truth and openness in a society obsessed with micromanaging the lives of its 1.3billion inhabitants is a problem for Ai Weiwei. China’s schizophrenic relationship with maintaining repressive regime structures whilst successfully engaging with a free market economy are themes that Weiwei’s work show. A compulsive communicator, his Twitter account logged the artist’s candid thoughts and movements. His belief is that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to spy on.

A documentary about Ai by Alison Klayman asks “Can an artist change China?”. Not just an artist, this artist. An artist that photographed himself flashing his middle finger at Tiananmen Square. An artist whose studio was trashed by Chinese authorities and beaten when he investigated the deaths of schoolchildren in post-earthquake Sichuan. An artist with a voice and a worldwide audience that China is scared of.

Ai Weiwei is not a revolutionary. He is an artist who shows us what it is to be human by example. He is the bridge between China’s past and its future.

www.freeaiweiwei.org

www.lissongallery.com

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This article was originally published in the Index on Censorship, 13 May 2011, 40 days into Ai Weiwei’s captivity.

These days Tony Blair cuts a tragicomic figure who embodies the oxymoron. He’s charged with bringing about Middle East peace when his actions fueled fires in those deserts. He’s pulled out of public events due to “threats of protest” from a gaggle of anti-war activists yet was cloth-eared to the millions shouting against an Iraq invasion before a single shock had been awed.

The demonstrations in Dublin set a precedent but would you have expected anything less? Hundreds of thousands of war dead may have been wiped off this earth but the violence that brought those deaths have scarred the skin of our humanity. The world was screaming “stop” but the men who held the guns still shot. We’ll never forgive Blair or Bush for that.

By publishing his book, he’s exercised his right to speak. He’s sated his ego by ensuring he won’t be forgotten. The people who planned to demonstrate at Waterstones and at Tate would’ve been exercising their right to protest. Both are freedoms of expression we should fight to protect. Both are freedoms the dead do not have.
Blair is having a crisis of conscience. He’s not having second thoughts about causing the deaths of soldiers and civilians and upsetting the balance of the Middle East for generations. Ever the considerate host, he feared a thousand people with placards calling him a war criminal would “hassle” his guests. Perhaps canceling his events is muzzling him. But it’s not censorship that stopped him. It’s cowardice.
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This article was originally published on the Index on Censorship, 09 September 2010.

The police officer filmed pushing Ian Tomlinson to the ground will not face criminal charges, the Crown Prosecution Service said today.

The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, announced this morning that the officer — called PC ‘A’ — shown here pushing the 47-year-old former newspaper vendor to the ground at the 2009 G20 demonstrations in London, has no case to answer.

PC ‘A’ can be seen hitting Tomlinson with a baton and pushing him over at the South end of the Royal Exchange Buildings in the City of London. Demonstrators helped Tomlinson up and he is later seen staggering down the road. He later collapsed outside 77 Cornhill and died from internal bleeding. Evidence compiled using photographs and video readily available on the internet and via news organisations showed that not only were police not attacked by protestors as they sought to give Tomlinson first aid (as had been claimed), but that their phalanx-like lines of officers may have prevented an ambulance from reaching Tomlinson sooner.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission was late in launching an inquiry into the death, claiming there was nothing suspicious about it. Only the release of footage of the incident by the Guardian and Channel 4 News a week later changed their minds. The IPCC submitted its findings four months after Tomlinson’s death. Its initial post mortem stated that he died of a heart attack. A second investigation by the IPCC concluded that he died of internal bleeding.

It took 15 months for the CPS to come to a decision about whether to charge the officer, a member of the Territorial Support Group, with manslaughter. The deadline to charge him with common assault has long passed.

In a statement released this morning, the CPS says it will “not be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Mr. Tomlinson’s death was caused by PC ‘A’ pushing him to the ground. That being the case, there is no realistic prospect of a conviction for unlawful act manslaughter. It also follows that there is also no realistic prospect of a conviction for assault occasioning actual bodily harm or misconduct in public office.”

The Guardian’s Paul Lewis, who won praise for his coverage of the incident, said: “Knowing the Ian Tomlinson case inside-out, I am shocked. Manslaughter was a tough call, but no charge at all? Not misconduct?”

The Tomlinson family who were in attendance at today’s decision along with PC ‘A’, claim the investigation was a cover-up. With Keir Starmer calling the events leading to Tomlinson’s death an “alleged assault” [despite clear evidence that Tomlinson was not only hit but pushed hard in the back], no one is surprised that PC ‘A’ was let off. But to not face any form of disciplinary action?

There’s a chant on the streets when demonstrators have a grudge against the police. It goes “no justice, no peace, fuck the police”. Today it is “no justice, no peace, we are the police.”

Download a timeline of the events on the day of Ian Tomlinson’s death.

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This article was first published on the Index on Censorship, 22 July 2010.

They recently had Sir Tom Stoppard and the Belarus Free Theatre on at the Free Word Centre.

Nick Cohen wrote a smashing review in the Guardian about how to make a drama out of a crisis.

Belarus is possibly Europe’s last dictatorship where freedom of speech and expression are, to state the bleeding obvious, non-existent. We can whinge about media bias and BBC censorship or other indulgent bullshit that may or may not affect our mortgage prices. But if I make sweeping criticisms of government or take a detailed bash at our police, I do not have to wait for the knock on my door. Nor do I have to watch my mobile phone conversations, vary my journey to work or learn how to lose people who are tailing me. All because I want to tell a story that needs to be told.

There’s a lot UK activists can learn from people like BFT’s Natalia Koliada – the main one being to stop ratcheting up your suffering under the unjust hands of the state. When you don’t know where your friend’s body has been buried because he popped round yours for a chat about life, the universe and everything, then come back to me. The next time you feel compelled to whine about having your ‘cover blown’ as you were trying to D-lock yourself to a bank, have a little whine. Then shut up, stop focusing on your suffering and look at the wider picture. The states and systems that need addressing, the truth that needs to be spoken to power.

Right. End of self-righteous bitch. Here are the videos.

The interns filmed them. I corrected exposure, cut them down yadda yadda.

Home Secretary Theresa May is to halt searches of individuals without reasonable suspicion after the European Court of Human Rights rules the power unlawful.

In a speech to the House of Commons, May cited a European Court of Human Rights judgment that stop and search powers granted under Section 44 were illegal and equal a violation of the right to a private life. The court stated that powers were “drawn too broadly — at the time of their initial authorisation and when they are used. It also found that the powers contain insufficient safeguards to protect civil liberties.”

May went on to say that the government cannot appeal the ECHR’s judgment — nor would they have done had they been able to.

Shadow Home Secretary Alan Johnson criticised the government’s decision, stating that the decision in Strasbourg was based on how stop and search was used “some years ago” and that the use of Section 44 had “dropped considerably over the last two years”.

May says that after seeking urgent legal advice and consulted police forces she would be “introducing a new suspicion threshold”. Instead of “requiring a search to be ‘expedient’ for the prevention of terrorism” a search would have to be “necessary for that purpose”.

Officers will no longer be able to search individuals using Section 44 powers. Instead, they will have to rely on Section 43 powers – which require officers to reasonably suspect the person to be a terrorist.

Officers will only be able to use Section 44 in relation to the searches of vehicles and they will have to have “reasonable suspicion” to do so.

The case that brought Section 44 to this end was brought to the European court by journalist Pennie Quinton and student Kevin Gillan. They were stopped outside demonstrations at Defence Systems and Equipment International, the world’s largest arms fair held at the Excel Centre in East London.

The High Court and the Court of Appeal rejected Quinton and Gillan’s assertion that tactics under Section 44 were illegal, citing the threat of terrorism in London.

However, the ECHR declared it an unlawful violation of an individual’s right to privacy. Because the UK has signed up to the European court, decisions made by it are binding.

Pennie Quilton told Index on Censorship: “It’s the least Theresa May can do. Section 44 is a law that has been challenged and has been ruled out of order. This government has to make amendments to the law to stay in line with the ruling in Strasbourg. Something had to be done because the police said they weren’t going to change the way they operated despite the judgment.”

The Metropolitan police said that despite a ruling in January by the European court that deemed Section 44 unlawful, they would continue using it as its decision was being appealed.

Jo Glanville, editor of Index on Censorship commented: “Stop and search under section 44 was widely used against individuals exercising their legitimate right to protest. It has been one of the most notorious and frequent abuses of free speech over the past decade. The Strasbourg ruling is an important landmark and I’m delighted that the government is scrapping the use of these powers.”

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This article was originally published in the Index on Censorship, 08 July 2010.

Learning Mandarin Chinese is easier than working out the finer threads of the News Corp/Shine Group/BSkyB/News International tapestry. The basics are that they are linked via a network of relatives and close friends last seen in the days of the Hapsburgs. To avoid treading on the world’s anti-monopoly laws, they’ve carefully divided control of each unit.

We’re all too aware of the monopoly of one Sergio Berlusconi. Murdoch the Elder is not doing a large-scale version of Italian media. Under Berlusconi, everything from newspapers, magazines and television is dictated by one man whose sole purpose is to hang on to power and escape prosecution for dodgy dealings. Murdoch is a businessman addicted to acquisition – he has a typical collectors mentality of wanting to have everything with little regard for the consequence. Being able to pull the puppet strings of business and government is one of the benefits of his unique position…but it is not his drive.

Life under Murdoch, at least my erstwhile parish Sky News, is not the plot to Tomorrow Never Dies. Rupert does not have a secret phone to editorial footsoldiers on newsdesks. When I was on the foreign desk, producers invoked the muscle of John Ryley, Head of News, when they were trying to swing the editorial eye. “John’s very keen” is a line often heard. Clever editors rebut with “let’s give him a call”.

Critics of Murdoch bias will invariably bring up the Adam Boulton and Kay Burley affairs during the last General Election. Casting personal opinion of these strong-willed stakeholders aside, let us look at the facts.

In Adam’s case, as Political Editor he was the pivot point for Sky’s election coverage. He is also a workaholic who hadn’t slept for days. When pitted against the stable and calm winds of Alaistair Campbell, Adam buckled. A moment of abandon – to be seen by all on YouTube.

In Kay’s position, a gaggle of demonstrators took advantage of Sky News having an open broadcasting stage as opposed to the BBC’s enclosed one. It’s like offering a crowd a large screen and a live Twitter feed. Someone is going to abuse it for a laugh.

Gaza, the Israeli raids on it and Sky News’ refusal to run the subsequent DEC Appeal is the only time I truly felt a corporate hand muzzling the mouth. And that on the day both the BBC and Sky said they would not be running the appeal, Sky News correspondent Emma Hurd opened a news item with a wide shot of the Gaza Strip and the line “this is the scene of a war crime”.

Should a takeover occur, broadcasting standards aren’t what journos at Osterley will be worried about. They’ll wonder if they’ll still have their jobs. As the axes fall, hacks will keep their heads down, produce the breaking news they’re so good at and pray they’re not next for the chop. Emails will be sent about how to cover stories on the cheap, deals and alliances with sister broadcasters will be forged to pool manpower. Quality of content won’t matter as much as appearing to tick the right boxes. Fear is a good way of keeping the rats in the hold.

Arguments against a Murdoch monopoly are usually based on events in print. Sky News knows it can’t get away with blanket bias on air. They can’t declare an allegiance to a political party like their ink-stained counterparts. Actions are watched closely by Ofcom and if one side of an issue appears to be getting too much air time, balance is restored one way or another.

Because television is not “self-regulating”, quality and content are dictated by public interest – or an editor’s perception of it. It’s hard to break truly original journalism in broadcast because editors closely monitor their competitors to see what they’re running – and run that. The process becomes a mobius strip of information dependent on precedence of events.

What I am worried about is what will happen elsewhere. Business-wise, a monopoly like that planned should a takeover occur is frightening…it will send shockwaves into other industries – healthcare, property, construction, natural resources. That’s what we should really be concerned about.

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This article was originally published on the Index on Censorship, 17 June 2010, and in a different version on The Comment Factory.

One of the most flagrant of these illegal uses was in London in April 2004, involving 840 people.

Fourteen police forces in the UK including the Metropolitan Police, City Police and Thames Valley misused powers on 40 separate occasions between 2001 and 2008. The Home Office said a number of “administrative errors” led to police chiefs not getting the proper authorisation to carry out searches. The Act allows officers to stop and search people without having any “reasonable suspicion” they are about to or intend to commit an act of terrorism.

The errors involve paperwork. Someone didn’t sign something or fill in the right bit. The errors came to light after the Metropolitan Police had to dig around its archive thanks to a Freedom of Information request.

If you define terrorism as the systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve a goal, then you can make that definition fit police actions whenever they invoke Section 44. The European Court of Human Rights ruled the blanket use of Section 44 across London was unlawful. The law is too loose and open to abuse.

Home Office admission to the illegality of stops and searches under Section 44 does not mean a government admission to the illegality and inhumanity of that very act. Messing up on an administrative level only means that police forces around the country will tighten up their bookkeeping. It does not mean they will cease stopping and searching members of the public they arbitrarily deem a threat to the status quo.

It doesn’t take guts to question what a police officer is doing to you once he invokes Section 44. It takes knowledge.

So what can you do?

• You do not have to give your name and address or explain why you are where you are. You can’t run off, but you can go limp and stay silent.

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This article was originally published on the Index on Censorship, 10 June 2010 and subsequently republished on The Comment Factory.