title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Federal prosecutors allege that in 2011, Farook and Marquez conspired to carry out shooting and bombing attacks at the library or cafeteria at Riverside Community College, where both were students, and on rush-hour traffic on California State Route 91 in Corona. Marquez reportedly told authorities that he and Farook tried to carry out the attack in 2011 or 2012. This plan was abandoned after three men in the Inland Empire were arrested for their plan to kill Americans in Afghanistan. Though the FBI had previously disputed this fact, Marquez was found to have ties to these men in 2016.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: By 2011, Marquez spent most of his time in Farook's home, listening to, watching, and reading radical Islamist propaganda, including "Inspire" magazine, the official publication of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and videos produced by Al-Shabaab as well as the sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On November 29, 2014, Marquez entered into a sham marriage with Mariya Chernykh, a Russian woman who arrived in the U.S. on a J-1 visa and the sister of the wife of Farook's older brother. According to "The New York Times", Marquez was said to have been paid between $5,000 and $10,000 to enter the green card marriage so that Chernykh could become a U.S. citizen.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Early on December 5, 2015, federal authorities searched Marquez's Riverside home under a federal search warrant. He waived his "Miranda" rights and cooperated "extensively" with federal investigators, "discussing at length his relationship with" Farook.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On December 17, 2015, Marquez was arrested and charged in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California with three federal criminal counts: conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism (i.e., himself, a firearm, and explosives); making a false statement in connection with acquisition of firearms ("straw purchase"); and immigration fraud. Another "straw purchase"-related charge and another immigration fraud charge were added on December 30, 2015. He faced a maximum of 50 years in prison if convicted on all of the charges. The court ordered Marquez held without bail, saying that Marquez would pose a danger to the community if released.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Marquez initially pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him. On April 28, 2016, he was named in an indictment as a co-conspirator in document fraud in relation to the arrest of Mariya Chernynk. In February 2017, as part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Marquez pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and to making false statements in connection with the purchase of a firearm. Marquez also admitted to plotting with Farook the alleged abandoned terror plots in 2011. As part of the plea agreement, the government agreed to dismiss the marriage fraud charges.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: The maximum sentence is 25 years in prison plus a $500,000 fine. Testifying in court when Marquez's guilty plea was entered, the father of one of the victims denounced the plea agreement, saying that it would lead to a sentence that was too light; the U.S. Attorney explained that while he understood the father's pain, the government did not have enough sufficient evidence to prosecute Marquez for more serious offenses.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: The sentencing hearing was initially set for November 6, 2017, but it was postponed to February 26, 2018, four days before. Sentencing was postponed indefinitely on June 26, 2018, after Marquez obtained a new attorney. On October 23, 2020, Marquez was sentenced to 20 years in prison.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Syed Raheel Farook, the brother of gunman Rizwan Farook, 31; his wife Tatiana Farook, 31; and her sister Mariya Chernykh, who was Marquez's "wife" in the sham marriage, were all subject to an investigation into Chernykh's sham marriage with Marquez, which arose during the investigation into the attack.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Raheel Farook served in the U.S. Navy in the Iraq War from 2003 to 2007, and was awarded two medals for service during the War on Terror. He was described by friends and neighbors as sociable and extroverted compared with his brother Rizwan. In 2011, he married Tatiana, a Russian citizen who immigrated to the U.S. in 2003 from her home village of Vysokiy, located from Moscow.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Tatiana had first settled into Richmond, Virginia, immediately after arriving into the U.S. on a J-1 visa. There, she married another man, but the couple divorced in 2010 and Tatiana moved to southern California, where she met Raheel. In California, she began launching several businesses, including a kiosk in The Shops at Montebello, a shopping mall.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Mariya Chernykh, the younger sister of Tatiana Farook and also from the village of Vysokiy, left Russia and entered the U.S. on a J-1 visa in July 2009 and failed to depart on October 30 of the same year as required by her visa. At some point since her arrival in the U.S., she made an application for asylum, though it is currently unknown if it was ruled on. She dated a Los Angeles man for years and had a child with him, but were forced to split up due to the sham marriage. On November 29, 2014, Chernykh entered into a sham marriage with Marquez in order to gain legal status in the U.S. According to "The Los Angeles Times", after the sham marriage, Chernykh struggled to play her part; on Christmas 2014, she was urged by Tatiana to stop posting online photos of herself with her ex-boyfriend. She began working with her sister as a saleswoman at her sister's kiosk. In January 2017, she pled guilty to immigration fraud.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: In late 2015, Chernykh and Marquez were set to be interviewed by immigration officials. As a result, according to the indictment, Raheel Farook created a fraudulent back-dated lease agreement that claimed the two were living with him and his wife since their marriage. Raheel and Tatiana Farook also allegedly staged family photos of Chernykh and Marquez, and established a joint transaction account for them. Prosecutors allege that on December 3, the day after the Inland Regional Center attack, Tatiana Farook lied to investigators about Chernykh and Marquez's marriage.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On February 18, 2016, the FBI searched a residence belonging to Raheel Farook, but did not comment on the exact nature of the search. Raheel was not arrested or named a suspect at that time.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On April 28, 2016, the Farooks and Chernykh were arrested and charged with conspiracy to knowingly make false statements under oath with respect to immigration documents. These charges carry a maximum sentence of five years.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: All three pleaded not guilty to the charges against them in a federal court in Riverside. Raheel Farook's mother and Chernykh's ex-boyfriend agreed to post their bails.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: The day following her arrest, Chernykh posted her bail, but she was transferred to the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement by the U.S. Marshals Service and is being held at Adelanto Detention Center. Deportation proceedings against her are pending, but are on hold until the criminal case is resolved.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker issued a statement, saying that the charges arose from the investigation into the attack. The indictment alleged that Chernykh paid Marquez to enter into a sham marriage to obtain U.S. immigration benefits. The U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement that Raheel and Tatiana Farook conspired in the sham marriage by "witnessing Marquez and Chernykh's wedding, taking staged family pictures of Marquez and Chernykh, establishing a joint checking account for the couple and creating a back-dated lease for Marquez and Chernykh to create the illusion that they shared a marital residence."


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Chernykh pleaded guilty to conspiracy, perjury, and two counts of making false statements. She was set to be sentenced on November 20, 2017, and faced up to 20 years in prison.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: In January 2017, Raheel Farook pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit immigration fraud, arising from his making of a false statement in support of Chernykh's application for permanent residency. The following month, Tatiana Farook pleaded guilty to the same crime. The maximum sentence in both cases is five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Both were initially set to be sentenced on November 13, 2017, but this was postponed to March 19, 2018, three days before. Both were later sentenced to three years of probation.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: In March 2020, Rafia Sultana Shareef, the mother of Syed Rizwan Farook and Syed Raheel Farook, pleaded guilty to one count of destroying evidence, becoming the only person prosecuted for a crime directly related to the December 2015 terrorist attack. Assistant U.S. Attorney Julius Nam argued, "The defendant chose to deliberately destroy a document that was central to the understanding of the planning". The FBI recovered what prosecutors called the "attack plan" from a shredder in Raheel Farook's home in Corona and reconstructed it using a computer and scanner, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Grigg.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Prosecutors did not allege in court that Shareef, who shared a townhouse with Farook and Malik, knew in advance about the terrorists' plans, but in a statement on March 3, 2020 said, "Shareef admitted that she knew her son had produced the document, and she believed it was directly related to his planning of the IRC attack." The "attack plan" included a diagram of the Inland Regional Center conference room and a pathway for the shooters to take between the tables. It also listed action items such as practicing at a shooting range, destroying electronics that authorities could use for tracking, purchasing parts to construct IEDs, and transferring funds to Shareef's bank account.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On February 11, 2021, U.S. District Court Judge Jesus G. Bernal sentenced Shareef to six months of home confinement and three years of probation. While the maximum sentence had been 20 years in federal prison, the under her plea agreement she faced at most 18 months in custody. Prior to sentencing, Shareef apologized to the handful of victims and survivors who were in the Riverside courthouse gallery, saying, "I pray for each of your family members" and to the judge, saying, "I am sorry for what I did."


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On March 18, 2016, California State Assemblyman Freddie Rodriguez of the Joint Legislative Committee on Emergency Management conducted a hearing in which first responders were to share details of the response to the attack and possible aspects that could be improved on. During the hearing, Michael Madden, a lieutenant with the San Bernardino Police Department and one of the first responders to respond to the Inland Regional Center, requested state aid in encrypting police radio channels. He explained that police communications were playing out real-time across the U.S. during the attack, being broadcast on YouTube and other network systems. According to Madden, this put first responders at risk, as potential suspects could have been monitoring the communications and tracking the actions of law enforcement. He added that the City of San Bernardino, as well as San Bernardino County, were moving towards a radio system that will incorporate encrypted frequencies.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: President Barack Obama called for "common sense" gun safety laws and stronger background checks as part of a bipartisan effort to reduce the frequency of such shootings. In an interview with CBS News' Norah O'Donnell, Obama said, "We have a pattern now of mass shootings in this country that has no parallel anywhere else in the world." Obama called for legislation to block people on the anti-terrorism No Fly List from purchasing weapons. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan opposed this proposal, saying that denying persons on the list the right to bear arms would violate their due process rights.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: After the shooting, some Democrats sought to tighten federal gun control regulations, "laying blame on a culture that allows even people who are not permitted to board airplanes to buy guns with ease," while some Republicans criticized what they believe to be "the Obama administration's unwillingness to come to terms with the true threat posed by Muslim extremists." Members of the California State Legislature also proposed to revisit some gun-control proposals that had previously stalled, with one assemblyman proposing a prohibition of the sale of guns to those on the federal No Fly List. On January 8, 2016, Representative Pete Aguilar of Redlands spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives and called for gun control. After the shooting, gun sales in California increased by more than 18,000, following an overall down year for statewide sales. Applications for concealed carry permits also rose 750 percent in San Bernardino County.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: The families of the shooting victims reacted to President Obama's executive action to tighten gun regulation and expand background checks. A number of family members expressed support for the plans as necessary and long overdue, while a few doubted whether they would reduce gun violence.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Prior to the attack, a measure was sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein; it would allow the U.S. to ban sales of guns and explosives to people listed on government watch lists of suspected terrorists. The so-called "Feinstein Amendment" came to the Senate floor one day after the attack, but failed on a party-line vote, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed. On June 16, 2016, Tina Meins, the daughter of one of the fourteen people killed in the attack, spoke in a press conference arranged by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, just a day after Murphy launched a fifteen-hour filibuster on the U.S. Senate floor, regarding federal gun control legislation. In the press conference, Meins asserted her support for gun control and questioned the Senate's vote against the Feinstein Amendment, explaining that more than 2,000 terror suspects were able to purchase firearms since 2004.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: "The New York Times" published a front-page editorial, the first in 95 years, which called for gun-control measures. The "Times" editorial board wrote: "It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency." Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., publisher of the "Times", said the placement of the editorial on the front page was "to deliver a strong and visible statement of frustration and anguish about our country's inability to come to terms with the scourge of guns."


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On April 20, 2016, California state lawmakers gave initial approval to five gun control bills, which outlawed assault weapons with detachable magazines, prohibited the sale of rifles with the "bullet button" device, banned possession of magazines holding more than ten rounds, required the collection of information on people intending to buy ammunition for any kind of firearm, and required improvised firearms to be registered with the state and given a serial number. The measures have been opposed by a number of politicians and gun rights organizations such as the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of California. Some of the bills were approved by Governor Brown on July 1, 2016, and went into effect in 2017.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On January 13, 2016, the wife of one of the slain victims filed wrongful death claims against San Bernardino County and dozens of unidentified individuals, and also sought damages totaling , saying that her husband's death was preventable and caused by negligence. On January 22, 2016, three relatives of another slain victim filed identical claims against the county for similar reasons and also claimed that the county fostered a hostile workplace environment and failed to provide safety to the Inland Regional Center's employees. The three relatives sought for a total of .


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: At least five San Bernardino city residents filed claims with the City of San Bernardino seeking reimbursement for least in property damage caused by bullets in the shootout, which hit a resident's truck and other items; the City Council voted 5–2 to deny the claims. The city police were one of seven law enforcement agencies on the scene, and it is uncertain which agency fired what bullets.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On May 31, 2016, federal prosecutors filed a lawsuit against Farook's family. This lawsuit would allow them to seize both the proceeds of two life insurance policies (and the policies themselves) held by Farook, both of which listed Farook's mother as the beneficiary. One policy worth was taken out by Farook in 2012 when he started working for the county, while the other, worth , was taken out the following year. According to NBC News, "Under federal law, assets derived from terrorism are subject to forfeiture. A federal judge must approve an application before the government can seize the money." In the six-page lawsuit, the life insurance company claimed that Farook's mother was aware of her son's intentions to carry out the attack, and reasoned that she should not be entitled to the benefits as a result. On September 2, 2016, government officials said they wanted to give the money to the victims' families.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On May 5, 2016, a group created by San Bernardino County announced plans for a memorial dedicated to the victims and survivors of the attack, as well as the first responders involved. Details about the design of the memorial, meant to be a fountain and garden, were released on the next day. Groundbreaking was slated to begin on June 2, the six-month anniversary of the attack. As of 2017, however, the memorial was still in the development stage. Such memorials usually take five to ten years to be completed.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Hours after the attack, classes were canceled at California State University, San Bernardino and at Loma Linda University following a bomb threat that was called in to the university's medical center, where many injured victims were being treated.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On December 15, after the Los Angeles Unified School District received a threat of attack by "explosive devices" and other means, Superintendent of Schools Ramon Cortines ordered the closure of all schools in the district for the day. Cortines cited the San Bernardino incident as an influence in his decision to close the schools. New York City received the same threat, but the New York City Department of Education determined it was a hoax and took no action.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On September 9, 2016, the Police Foundation and the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) released a review of law enforcement response to the attack. The review provided a detailed overview of the incident response; lessons learned to improve responding agencies' policies, procedures, tactics, systems, culture, and relationships; and guidance to other agencies and first responders as they prepare for responses to terrorist, active shooter, or other hostile events, and mass-casualty incidents.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On the one-year anniversary of the attack, it was reported that a number of survivors were accusing San Bernardino County of cutting off support for them. This included a lack of access to counseling or antidepressant medication, the injured attempting to get surgeries approved and physical therapy covered, a lack of assistance in dealing with a complex workers' compensation program, and health insurers refusing to cover injuries because they occurred during an act of workplace violence. A county spokesman denied the accusations and said, "The county is, and always has been, committed to ensuring our employees get all the care they need."


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On the first anniversary of the attack, a bicycle ride hosted by the Redlands-based club "Ride Yourself Fit" was held at 7:30a.m.; dozens of local bicyclists, many of them police officers, rode , with one mile representing each person killed in the attack. The remembrance bicycle ride continues to be held every December 2. A remembrance ceremony was held at a local blood bank at 8:00a.m. Later that morning, over 200 people at the Inland Regional Center held a moment of silence outside the building. At 3:30p.m., a "Peace Garden" was opened on the campus of California State University, San Bernardino; it was dedicated in the memory of five of the victims, who were all alumni of the university.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Following the attack, county offices, including the Department of Public Health, were closed the remainder of the week, with only the most essential services remaining open. Most of the county's 20,000 employees returned to work on December 7, 2015, though Inland Regional Center personnel worked remotely. The Inland Regional Center remained closed until January 4, 2016. Its two main buildings now operated under heightened security; the building where the attack took place will remain closed indefinitely. The location of a planned train station next to the Center was moved eastward due in part to the Center's new security procedures.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: The City of San Bernardino incurred up to in unforeseen expenses (such as the deployment of more police officers on extended shifts) as a result of the attack, and planned to seek state and federal emergency funds to help cover the costs.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in San Bernardino County, since roughly 35 percent of the Department of Public Health employees were among those killed or wounded in the attack, and the attack left the county with very few health inspectors to do critical work. The emergency declaration will allow the state of California to send in additional health inspectors for assistance. On March 22, 2016, San Bernardino County unanimously voted to accept a agreement with the California Association of Environmental Health Administrators to provide up to 30 temporary health inspectors to replace those currently on leave. As of May 29, 2016, 50 percent of county environmental health staff remain on leave, and temporary staff remain on loan from Riverside, Orange, Los Angeles, Contra Costa, Marin, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo Counties.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: About 2,000 local residents gathered at a candlelight vigil at San Manuel Stadium in downtown San Bernardino the day after the attack. At the vigil, Mayor R. Carey Davis praised the first responders, said that the tragedy "has forever impacted our community," and talked about how the community had come together following the attack. Five of the victims and one of the killers were graduates of California State University, San Bernardino; on December 8, 2015, more than 1,000 students, alumni, and community members attended a candlelight vigil on campus in honor of the victims. On January 4, 2016, a memorial for the slain victims was held at the Citizens Business Bank Arena in nearby Ontario, with thousands in attendance, including Governor Brown, California Attorney General Kamala Harris, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Christian pastor Rick Warren.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: After the attack, a relief fund for San Bernardino was set up and has raised as of March 3, 2016. On July 5, 2016, the relief fund finished distributing the entirety of its raised money to the families of the deceased victims (which all received 80 percent of the funds), the 22 people injured (who received 15.5 percent), and witnesses to the shooting (who received 4.5 percent). There were 75 named recipients in total, though the two police officers injured in the shootout with the perpetrators declined their share of the compensation.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: President Barack Obama ordered U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House, public buildings, military installations, Navy ships, embassies, and diplomatic missions. On December 18, 2015, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama met in San Bernardino with families of the fatal victims, and emergency personnel who first responded to the incident.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: The governors of several states also ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff in their states as well. In California, the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the State Capitol was canceled and all flags were lowered to half-staff.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Twelve of the dead were members of the Service Employees International Union; SEIU international president Mary Kay Henry said, "Our hearts are broken from this tragedy. ... We will unite to demand that our nation does everything possible to ensure that no more families have to feel this pain, sadness and loss ever again."


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: American Muslim organizations, including Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Islamic Society of Orange County, condemned the attacks. A night vigil was held the day after the attacks at the largest mosque in the San Bernardino County, the Ahmadiyya Baitul Hameed Mosque.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: In the aftermath of the shooting, CAIR reported an escalation in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the U.S., including the throwing of a pig's head at a mosque in Philadelphia, the beating of a Queens shop owner, and incidents of death threats and vandalism. A number of attacks and incidents of vandalism in southern California in the weeks following the attack were investigated as anti-Muslim hate crimes.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: A "Muslims United for San Bernardino" campaign to raise money to assist victims' families with funeral expenses and other needs raised more than 152,000 from more than 1,000 donors, becoming the most successful crowdfunding venture Muslim Americans have ever launched.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On December 15, 2015, three senior White House officialsValerie Jarrett, Cecilia Muñoz, and Ben Rhodesmet with American Muslim and Sikh leaders to discuss the increase in violent attacks upon members of the American Muslim and Sikh community following the attack (Sikhs are not Muslims but have been occasionally targeted in anti-Islamic bias-motivated crimes).


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On January 19, 2016, "Dabiq", the online propaganda magazine of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, released an issue praising the shooting and the perpetrators.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Governor Brown said, "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims' families and everyone affected by the brutal attack." On September 12, 2016, Brown and California Attorney General Kamala Harris awarded eight police officers the Medal of Valor for their roles in emergency response during the attack and the subsequent shootout with the perpetrators.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said the Pakistani government will continue to offer "all possible legal assistance" to the U.S. in the investigation, and that:


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: [No] sane Pakistani or Muslim could even think about doing such acts, and only few people are using the name of Islam for their wrongdoings, which is defaming our religion. Such heinous acts also lead to serious difficulties for millions of Muslims who live in Western and other countries, and the extremists and nationalist elements in those societies look at Muslims with suspicions. Islamophobia is being spread around the world. What the terrorists are doing has nothing to do with Islam.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: In an address to the nation delivered from the Oval Office on December 6, 2015, President Obama declared the shooting an act of terrorism, referring to the shooters as having "gone down the dark path of radicalization" and embracing a "perverted version of Islam". Obama said that "the threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it" and promised that the United States will "destroy ISIL and any other organization that tries to harm us." Obama also outlined the ongoing fight against ISIL (including U.S. airstrikes, financial sanctions, and targeted special operations) and urged Americans to not give in to fear. It was just the third speech from the Oval Office in the seven years of Obama's presidency.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Many Republican U.S. presidential candidates at the time, among them Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump, responded by claiming the United States was at war. Chris Christie, who was campaigning in Iowa at the time, declared, "What the fact is this is a new world war and one that won't look like the last two. And this is one where it's radical Islamic jihadists everyday are trying to kill Americans and disrupt and destroy our way of life." Jeb Bush stated, "If this is a war, and I believe it is since they have declared war on us, we need to declare war on them."


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: In the "New York Review of Books", Wyatt Mason observed that a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, committed by a devout Christian a week earlier, did not lead to the kind of rhetorical outpouring produced by the San Bernardino attack, and argued that the difference in response suggested racism was at work.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Some Muslim leaders objected to Obama's request that American Muslims help to "root out" extremism in their communities. Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour commented, "I'm tired of this idea that extremism can only mean Muslims or Islam or people who are associated with Islam ... why is it that we're only obsessed with Islam and Muslim communities?". "We would never ask any other faith community to stand up and condemn acts of violence committed by people within their groups", she said.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: On June 18, 2016, President Obama issued a Weekly Address addressing the San Bernardino attack and a mass shooting that occurred at a gay nightclub six days earlier. In the speech, he addressed the topics of homegrown terrorism and gun control.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: Being tough on terrorism, particularly the sorts of homegrown terrorism that we've seen now in Orlando and San Bernardino, means making it harder for people who want to kill Americans to get their hands on assault weapons that are capable of killing dozens of innocents as quickly as possible. That's something I'll continue to talk about in the weeks ahead.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: In response to the shooting, Donald Trump called for a "total and complete" ban on Muslims entering the United States "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." Trump's statement drew widespread condemnation, including from the White House, the Pentagon, the United Nations, and foreign leaders such as British Prime Minister David Cameron and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. Trump's suggestion was met with condemnation from both Democratic and Republican candidates for the presidency in 2016. Trump, in an interview on "Good Morning America", cited the internment of Japanese Americans, German Americans, and Italian Americans during World War II as precedent for his proposal.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: The attack reignited the debate over whether U.S. government should expand electronic surveillance of Americans, and specifically whether Congress should adopt legislation mandating that technology companies provide a backdoor so that law enforcement has access to encrypted communication. Technology companies oppose such legislation, arguing that it would unacceptably undermine security. At a December 9, 2015, hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Comey called upon tech companies offering end-to-end encryption (such as Apple) to revise their "business model". There is no evidence that the shooters in San Bernardino used encrypted communications, although Comey said the attackers in the Curtis Culwell Center attack earlier the same year exchanged encrypted text messages. Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Intelligence Committee, are working on encryption legislation. Additionally, Feinstein reintroduced legislation that would require tech companies to report "knowledge of any terrorist activity" they become aware of, a measure that worried Silicon Valley technology companies, which object to such measures on privacy grounds.


title: 2015 San Bernardino attack

text: The use of BearCat armored vehicles by police during the shootout revived debate over use of military and military-style equipment by police, with some law-enforcement officials saying that the shooting showed a need for police to acquire such equipment.


title: Wog

text: Wog is a racial slur in Australian English and British English applied to people from the Mediterranean region such as Southern Europeans and North Africans. In British English, it more typically refers to people from the Indian subcontinent and certain other parts of Asia, such as the East Indies. Whilst it is extremely derogatory in British English, in Australian English, it may be considered non-offensive depending on how the word is used, due to reclamation and changing connotations.


title: Wog

text: In the United Kingdom, it has usually been employed against people from the Indian subcontinent and less typically to North Africans and those from the Middle East. It is generally considered similar to other racially abusive terms such as 'dago' for Spanish, 'spic' for Hispanics or 'wop' for Italians. In Australia, "wog" exclusively refers to Mediterranean people and Australian residents of Mediterranean, Southern European, Southeast European or Middle Eastern ethnicity, descent and appearance. The slur became widely diffused in Australia with an increase in immigration from Southern Europe and the Levant after the Second World War, and the term expanded to include all immigrants from the Mediterranean region and the Middle East. These new arrivals were perceived by the majority population as contrasting with the larger predominant Anglo-Celtic Australian people. In contemporary times, the word has lost some of its negative connotations in Australia in certain contexts due to reappropriation by the intended targets of the slur, though this is still considered a point of controversy.


title: Wog

text: The origin of the term is unclear. It was first noted by lexicographer F.C. Bowen in 1929, in his "Sea Slang: a dictionary of the old-timers’ expressions and epithets", where he defines wogs as "lower class Babu shipping clerks on the Indian coast." Many dictionaries say "wog" probably derives from the golliwog, a blackface minstrel doll character from a children's book, "The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwogg" by Florence Kate Upton, published in 1895; or from "pollywog", a dialect term for tadpole that is used in maritime circles to indicate someone who has not crossed the equator.


title: Wog

text: Suggestions that the word is an acronym for "wily Oriental gentleman", "working on government service", or similar, are examples of false etymology or backronyms.


title: Wog

text: "Wog", in its modern usage in the UK, is a derogatory and racially offensive slang word referring to a dark skinned person, including people from the Middle East, North Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and other parts of Asia such as the East Indies, but usually not those from the Mediterranean area or Southern Europe. Historically, the term also encompassed Southern Europeans and other such people with slightly darker skin tone than ethnically British people. A similar term, "wop", has historically been used to refer to Italians.


title: Wog

text: The saying, "The wogs begin at Calais" (implying that everyone who is not British is a wog), appears to date from the First World War but was popularised by George Wigg, Labour MP for Dudley, in 1949 when in a parliamentary debate concerning the Burmese, Wigg shouted at the Conservative benches, "The Honourable Gentleman and his friends think they are all 'wogs'. Indeed, the Right Honourable Member for Woodford [i.e., Winston Churchill] thinks that the 'wogs' begin at Calais."


title: Wog

text: As reported by English-Jewish journalist Linda Grant, people in England have referred to Jews and Israelis as "wogs", as well.


title: Wog

text: In 1969, the term was used on official police paperwork by Leeds City Police officers to describe the Nigerian British man David Oluwale; two officers were later found guilty of his assault and are also believed to be responsible for his death. This inspired the title of Kester Aspden's book on the case, "Nationality: Wog, The Hounding of David Oluwale".


title: Wog

text: In Season 1 Episode 6 of "Fawlty Towers", "The Germans", Major Gowen specifies "wog" as meaning any person from India when speaking to Basil Fawlty about the India vs England cricket game at The Oval.


title: Wog

text: In Australia, the term "wog" refers to residents of Southern European, Southeast European or Middle Eastern ethnicity or appearance. The slur became widely diffused with an increase in immigration from Southern Europe and the Levant after the Second World War and the term expanded to include immigrants from the Mediterranean region and the Middle East. These new arrivals were perceived by the majority population as contrasting with the larger predominant Anglo-Celtic Australian culture.


title: Wog

text: Today, "wog" is used particularly in places in Australia with substantial numbers of Southern European Australians, as well as non-European Middle Eastern populations, such as in Sydney and Melbourne. As with other slang and" prima facie" profanity used in contemporary Australian English, the term "wog" may be employed either aggressively or affectionately within differing contexts.


title: Wog

text: In Australian English, "wog" can also be used as a slang word for an illness such as a common cold or influenza, as in: "I'm coming down with a wog". Such usage is not perceived as derogatory.


title: Wog

text: More recently, Southern European-Australian performing artists have taken ownership of the term "wog", defusing its original pejorative nature. The popular 1980s stage show "Wogs Out of Work", created by Nick Giannopoulos and Simon Palomares, and its sequel "Who Let the Wogs Out?" are early examples. The original production was followed on television with "Acropolis Now", starring Giannopoulos, Palomares, George Kapiniaris and Mary Coustas, and films such as "The Wog Boy" and "", and parodies such as those of Santo Cilauro (Italian), Eric Bana (Croatian-German), Vince Colosimo (Italian), Nick Giannopoulos (Greek), Frank Lotito (Italian), Mary Coustas (Greek), comedy troupe Sooshi Mango (Italian) and SBS Television's offbeat "Pizza" by Paul Fenech (Maltese) and later Here Come the Habibs. TV series have continued this change in Australian cultural history—with some even classifying a genre of "wogsploitation" of pop culture products being created by and for a proudly "wog" market. More recently, a popular production, 'Superwog' - created by Theodore and Nathan Saidden - has begun streaming on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The series began as a YouTube sketch series and has since become very popular among Australian teens. Recent works of the genre have been used by Australians of non-English speaking backgrounds to assert ethnic identity rather than succumb to ethnic stereotypes. Upon the release of "Wog Boy 2", Giannopoulos discussed the contemporary use of the term "wog" in the Australian context:


title: Wog

text: I think by defusing the word 'wog' we've shown our maturity and our great ability to adapt and just laugh things off, you know... When I first came [to Greece] and I started trying to explain to them why we got called 'wog' they'd get really angry about it, you know. They were, "Why? Why they say this about the Greek people?" You know? But then when they see what we've done with it—and this is the twist—that we've turned it into a term of endearment, they actually really get into that...


title: Wog

text: Thus, in contemporary Australia, the term "wog" may, in certain contexts, be viewed as a "nickname" rather than a pejorative term—akin to the nicknames ascribed within Australian English to other historically significant cultural groupings such as the English ("Poms"), the Americans ("Yanks") and New Zealanders ("Kiwis").


title: Wog

text: Duane Clarridge, a former CIA officer, explained that the term "wog factor" was used by the CIA "to acknowledge that the motivations that shape decision-making in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent are very different from our own."


title: Wog

text: The word "wog" is used by Scientologists to refer to non-Scientologists. Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard defined wog as a "common, everyday garden-variety humanoid ... He 'is' a body. [He] doesn't know he's there, etc. He isn't there as a spirit at all. He is not operating as a thetan."


title: Robert Christgau

text: Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such as hip hop, riot grrrl, and the import of African popular music in the West. Christgau spent 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for "The Village Voice", during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music for "Esquire", "Creem", "Newsday", "Playboy", "Rolling Stone", "Billboard", NPR, "Blender", and "MSN Music", and was a visiting arts teacher at New York University. CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "the E. F. Hutton of the music world – when he talks, people listen."


title: Robert Christgau

text: Christgau is best known for his terse, letter-graded capsule album reviews, composed in a concentrated, fragmented prose style featuring layered clauses, caustic wit, one-liner jokes, political digressions, and allusions ranging from common knowledge to the esoteric. Originally published in his "Consumer Guide" columns during his tenure at "The Village Voice" from 1969 to 2006, the reviews were collected in book form across three decade-ending volumes – "" (1981), "" (1990), and "" (2000). Multiple collections of his essays have also been published in book form, and a website published in his name since 2001 has freely hosted most of his work.


title: Robert Christgau

text: In 2006, the "Voice" dismissed Christgau after the paper's acquisition by New Times Media. He continued to write reviews in the "Consumer Guide" format for "MSN Music", "Cuepoint", and "Noisey" – "Vice"s music section – where they were published in his "Expert Witness" column until July 2019. In September that year, he launched a paid-subscription newsletter called "And It Don't Stop", published on the email-newsletter platform Substack and featuring a monthly "Consumer Guide" column, among other writings.


title: Robert Christgau

text: Christgau was born in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, on April 18, 1942, and was raised in Queens, the son of a fireman. He has said he became a rock and roll fan when disc jockey Alan Freed moved to the city in 1954.


title: Robert Christgau

text: After attending public school in New York City, he attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1962 with a B.A. in English. At college, his musical interests turned to jazz, but he quickly returned to rock after moving back to New York. Christgau has said that Miles Davis's 1960 album "Sketches of Spain" initiated in him "one phase of the disillusionment with jazz that resulted in my return to rock and roll." He was deeply influenced by New Journalism writers such as Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe. "My ambitions when I went into journalism were always, to an extent, literary," Christgau later said.


title: Robert Christgau

text: Christgau wrote short stories, before giving up fiction in 1964 to become a sportswriter, and later, a police reporter for the "Newark Star-Ledger". He became a freelance writer after a story he wrote about the death of a woman in New Jersey was published by "New York" magazine. Christgau was among the first dedicated rock critics. He was asked to take over the dormant music column at "Esquire", which he began writing in June 1967. He also contributed to "Cheetah" magazine at that time. He subsequently became a leading voice in the formation of a musical–political aesthetic combining New Left politics and the counterculture. After "Esquire" discontinued the column, Christgau moved to "The Village Voice" in 1969, and he also worked as a college professor.


title: Robert Christgau

text: From early on in his emergence as a critic, Christgau was conscious of his lack of formal knowledge of music. In a 1968 piece he commented:


title: Robert Christgau

text: I don't know anything about music, which ought to be a damaging admission but isn't ... The fact is that pop writers in general shy away from such arcana as key signature and beats to the measure ... I used to confide my worries about this to friends in the record industry, who reassured me. They didn't know anything about music either. The technical stuff didn't matter, I was told. You just gotta dig it.


title: Robert Christgau

text: In early 1972, Christgau accepted a full-time job as music critic for "Newsday". He returned to "The Village Voice" in 1974 as music editor. In a 1976 piece for the newspaper, he coined the term "Rock Critic Establishment" to describe the growth in influence of American music critics. His article carried the parenthesized subtitle "But Is That Bad for Rock?" He listed Dave Marsh, John Rockwell, Paul Nelson, Jon Landau and himself as members of this "Establishment".


title: Robert Christgau

text: Christgau remained at "The Village Voice" until August 2006, when he was fired shortly after the paper's acquisition by New Times Media. Two months later, Christgau became a contributing editor at "Rolling Stone" (which first published his review of Moby Grape's "Wow" in 1968). Late in 2007, Christgau was fired by "Rolling Stone", although he continued to work for the magazine for another three months. Starting with the March 2008 issue, he joined "Blender", where he was listed as "senior critic" for three issues and then "contributing editor". Christgau had been a regular contributor to "Blender" before he joined "Rolling Stone". He continued to write for "Blender" until the magazine ceased publication in March 2009.


title: Robert Christgau

text: In 1987, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of "Folklore and Popular Culture" to study the history of popular music.


title: Robert Christgau

text: Christgau has also written frequently for "Playboy", "Spin", and "Creem". He appears in the 2011 rockumentary "Color Me Obsessed", about the Replacements.


title: Robert Christgau

text: He previously taught during the formative years of the California Institute of the Arts. As of 2007, he was also an adjunct professor in the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at New York University.


title: Robert Christgau

text: In August 2013, Christgau revealed in an article written for Barnes & Noble's website that he is writing a memoir. On July 15, 2014, Christgau debuted a monthly column on "Billboard"s website.


title: Robert Christgau

text: Christgau is perhaps best known for his "Consumer Guide" columns, which have been published more-or-less monthly since July 10, 1969, in the "Village Voice", as well as a brief period in "Creem". In its original format, each edition of the "Consumer Guide" consisted of approximately 20 single-paragraph album reviews, each given a letter grade ranging from A+ to E−. These reviews were later collected, expanded, and extensively revised in a three-volume book series, the first of which was published in 1981 as ""; it was followed by "" (1990) and "" (2000).


title: Robert Christgau

text: In his original grading system from 1969 to 1990, albums were given a grade ranging from A+ to E−. Under this system, Christgau generally considered a B+ or higher to be a personal recommendation. He noted that in practice, grades below a C− were rare. In 1990, Christgau changed the format of the "Consumer Guide" to focus more on the albums he liked. B+ records that Christgau deemed "unworthy of a full review" were mostly given brief comments and star marks ranging from three down to one, denoting an honorable mention", records which Christgau believed may be of interest to their own target audience. Lesser albums were filed under categories such as "Neither" (which may impress at first with "coherent craft or an arresting track or two", before failing to make an impression again) and "Duds" (which indicated bad records and were listed without further comment). Christgau did give full reviews and traditional grades to records he pans in an annual November "Turkey Shoot" column in "The Village Voice", until he left the newspaper in 2006.


title: Robert Christgau

text: In 2001, robertchristgau.com – an online archive of Christgau's "Consumer Guide" reviews and other writings from his career – was set up as a co-operative project between Christgau and longtime friend Tom Hull; the two had met in 1975 shortly after Hull queried Christgau as "The Village Voice"s regional editor for St. Louis. The website was created after the September 11, 2001, attacks when Hull was stuck in New York while visiting from his native Wichita. While Christgau spent many nights preparing past "Village Voice" writings for the website, by 2002 much of the older "Consumer Guide" columns had been inputted by Hull and a small coterie of fans. According to Christgau, Hull is "a computer genius as well as an excellent and very knowledgeable music critic, but he'd never done much web site work. The design of the web site, especially its high searchability and small interest in graphics, are his idea of what a useful music site should be".


title: Robert Christgau

text: In December 2006, Christgau began writing his "Consumer Guide" columns for "MSN Music", initially appearing every other month, before switching to a monthly schedule in June 2007. On July 1, 2010, he announced in the introduction to his "Consumer Guide" column that the July 2010 installment would be his last on MSN. However, on November 22, Christgau launched a blog on MSN, called "Expert Witness", which featured reviews only of albums that he had graded B+ or higher, since those albums "are the gut and backbone of my musical pleasure"; the writing of reviews for which are "so rewarding psychologically that I'm happy to do it at blogger's rates". He also began corresponding with dedicated readers of the column, named as "The Witnesses" after the column. On September 20, 2013, Christgau announced in the comments section that "Expert Witness" would cease to be published by October 1, 2013, writing, "As I understand it, Microsoft is shutting down the entire MSN freelance arts operation at that time ..."


title: Robert Christgau

text: On September 10, 2014, Christgau debuted a new version of "Expert Witness" on "Cuepoint", an online music magazine published on the blogging platform Medium. In August 2015, he was hired by "Vice" to write the column for the magazine's music section, Noisey. In July 2019, the final edition of "Expert Witness" was published.


title: Robert Christgau

text: In September 2019, at the encouragement of friend and colleague Joe Levy, Christgau began publishing the newsletter "And It Don't Stop" on the newsletter-subscription platform Substack. Charging subscribers $5 per month, it has included his monthly "Consumer Guide" column, podcasts, and free weekly content like book reviews. Christgau was skeptical of the platform at first: "Basically I told Joe that if I didn't have enough subscribers to pay what I made at Noisey by Christmas I was going to quit. I wasn't going to do it for less than that money. I had that many subscribers inside of three days." By May 2020, "And It Don't Stop" had more than 1,000 subscribers. Christgau was ambivalent about the platform at first, but has since found it "immensely gratifying", explaining that, "A man my age, who is still really intellectually active? It is tremendously flattering and gratifying that there are people who are ready to help support me."


title: Robert Christgau

text: Between 1968 and 1970, Christgau submitted ballots in "Jazz & Pop" magazine's annual critics' poll. He selected Bob Dylan's "John Wesley Harding" (released late in 1967), The Who's "Tommy" (1969), and Randy Newman's "12 Songs" (1970) as the best pop albums of their respective years, and Miles Davis's "Bitches Brew" (1970) as the best jazz album of its year. "Jazz & Pop" discontinued publication in 1971.


title: Robert Christgau

text: In 1971, Christgau inaugurated the annual Pazz & Jop music poll, named in tribute to "Jazz & Pop". The poll surveyed music critics on their favorite releases of the year. The poll results were published in the "Village Voice" every February after compiling "top ten" lists submitted by music critics across the nation. Throughout Christgau's career at the "Voice", every poll was accompanied by a lengthy Christgau essay analyzing the results and pondering the year's overall musical output. The "Voice" continued the feature after Christgau's dismissal. Although he no longer oversaw the poll, Christgau continued to vote and, since the 2015 poll, also contributed essays to the results.


title: Robert Christgau

text: Each year that Pazz & Jop has run, Christgau has created a personal list of his favorite releases called the "Dean's List". Only his top ten count toward his vote in the poll, but his full lists of favorites usually numbered far more than that. These lists – or at least Christgau's top tens – were typically published in "The Village Voice" along with the Pazz & Jop results. After Christgau was dismissed from the "Voice", he continued publishing his annual lists on his own website and at "The Barnes & Noble Review".


title: Robert Christgau

text: While Pazz & Jop's aggregate critics' poll are its main draw, Christgau's Deans' Lists are noteworthy in their own right. Henry Hauser from "Consequence of Sound" said Christgau's "annual 'Pazz & Jop' poll has been a bona fide American institution. For music writers, his year-end essays and extensive 'Dean's List' are like watching the big ball drop in Times Square."


title: Robert Christgau

text: The following are Christgau's choices for the number-one album of the year, including the point score he assigned for the poll. Pazz & Jop's rules provided that each item in a top ten could be allotted between 5 and 30 points, with all ten items totaling 100, allowing critics to weight certain albums more heavily if they chose to do so. In some years, Christgau often gave an equal number of points to his first- and second-ranked albums, but they were nevertheless ranked as first and second, not as a tie for first; this list collects only his number-one picks.


title: Robert Christgau

text: "Christgau's blurbs", writes "Slate" music critic Jody Rosen, "are like no one else's – dense with ideas and allusions, first-person confessions and invective, highbrow references and slang". Rosen describes Christgau's writing as "often maddening, always thought-provoking ... With Pauline Kael, Christgau is arguably one of the two most important American mass-culture critics of the second half of the 20th century. ... All rock critics working today, at least the ones who want to do more than rewrite PR copy, are in some sense Christgauians." "Spin" magazine wrote in 2015, "You probably wouldn't be reading this publication if Robert Christgau didn't largely invent rock criticism as we know it."


title: Robert Christgau

text: Douglas Wolk said the earliest "Consumer Guide" columns were generally brief and detailed, but "within a few years ... he developed his particular gift for 'power, wit and economy', a phrase he used to describe the Ramones in a dead-on 37-word review of "Leave Home"". In his opinion, the "Consumer Guide" reviews were "an enormous pleasure to read slowly, as writing, even if you have no particular interest in pop music. And if you do happen to have more than a little interest in pop music, they're a treasure." While regarding the early columns as "a model of cogent, witty criticism", Dave Marsh in 1976 said "the tone of the writing is now snotty – it lacks compassion, not to mention empathy, with current rock."


title: Robert Christgau

text: Fans of Christgau's "Consumer Guide" like to share lines from their favorite reviews, Wolk writes, citing "Sting wears his sexual resentment on his chord changes like a closet 'American Woman' fan" (from Christgau's review of the 1983 Police album "Synchronicity"); "Calling Neil Tennant a bored wimp is like accusing Jackson Pollock of making a mess" (reviewing the 1987 Pet Shop Boys album "Actually"); and "Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home" (in a review of Prince's 1980 album "Dirty Mind").


title: Robert Christgau

text: In 1978, Lou Reed recorded a tirade against Christgau and his column on the 1978 live album, "": "Critics. What does Robert Christgau do in bed? I mean, is he a toe fucker? Man, anal retentive, "A Consumer's Guide to Rock", what a moron: 'A Study' by, y'know, Robert Christgau. Nice little boxes: B-PLUS. Can you imagine working for a fucking year, and you get a B+ from some asshole in "The Village Voice"?" Christgau rated the album C+ and wrote in his review, "I thank Lou for pronouncing my name right." In December 1980, Christgau provoked angry responses from "Voice" readers when his column approvingly quoted his wife Carola Dibbell's reaction to the murder of John Lennon: "Why is it always Bobby Kennedy or John Lennon? Why isn't it Richard Nixon or Paul McCartney?" Similar criticism came from Sonic Youth in their song "Kill Yr Idols". Christgau responded by saying "Idolization is for rock stars, even rock stars manqué like these impotent bohos – critics just want a little respect. So if it's not too hypersensitive of me, I wasn't flattered to hear my name pronounced right, not on this particular title track."


title: Robert Christgau

text: Christgau has named Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Chuck Berry, the Beatles, and the New York Dolls as his top five artists of all time. In a 1998 obituary, he called Frank Sinatra "the greatest singer of the 20th century". He considers Billie Holiday "probably favorite singer". In his 2000 "Consumer Guide" book, Christgau said his favorite rock album was either "The Clash" (1977) or "New York Dolls" (1973), while his favorite record in general was Monk's 1958 "Misterioso". In July 2013, during an interview with "Esquire" magazine's Peter Gerstenzang, Christgau criticized the voters at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, saying "they're pretty stupid" for not voting in the New York Dolls. When asked about Beatles albums, he said he most often listens to "The Beatles' Second Album" – which he purchased in 1965 – and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band".


title: Robert Christgau

text: Wolk wrote: "When he says he's 'encyclopedic' about popular music, he means it. There are not a lot of white guys in their 60s waving the flag for Lil Wayne's "Da Drought 3", especially not in the same column as they wave the flag for a Willie Nelson/Merle Haggard/Ray Price trio album, an anthology of new Chinese pop, Vampire Weekend, and Wussy ..." Christgau reflected in 2004: "Rock criticism was certainly more fun in the old days, no matter how cool the tyros opining for chump change in netzines like "PopMatters" and "Pitchfork" think it is now."


title: Robert Christgau

text: Christgau readily admits to having prejudices and generally disliking genres such as heavy metal, salsa, dance, art rock, progressive rock, bluegrass, gospel, Irish folk, jazz fusion, and classical music. "I admire metal's integrity, brutality, and obsessiveness", Christgau wrote in 1986, "but I can't stand its delusions of grandeur, the way it apes and misapprehends reactionary notions of nobility". Christgau said in 2018 that he rarely writes about jazz as it is "hard" to write about in an "impressionistic way", that he is "not at all well-schooled in the jazz albums of the '50s and '60s", and that he has neither the "language nor the frame of reference to write readily about them"; even while critiquing jazz artists like Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Sonny Rollins, he said "finding the words involves either considerable effort or a stroke of luck". Christgau has also admitted to disliking the records of Jeff Buckley and Nina Simone, noting that the latter's classical background, "default gravity and depressive tendencies are qualities I'm seldom attracted to in any kind of art." Writing in a two-part feature on music critics for "Rolling Stone" in 1976, Dave Marsh bemoaned Christgau as a "classic, sad example" of how "many critics ... superimpos[ed] their own, frequently arbitrary, standards upon performers." Marsh went on to accuse him of becoming "arrogant and humorless – the raves are reserved for jazz artists, while even the best rock is treated condescendingly unless it conforms to Christgau's passion for leftist politics (particularly feminism) and bohemian culture." Marsh named another prejudice of Christgau's to be "apolitical or middle-class performers" of rock music.


title: Robert Christgau

text: Christgau has been widely known as the "Dean of American rock critics", a designation he originally gave to himself while slightly drunk at a press event for the 5th Dimension in the early 1970s. According to Rosen, "Christgau was in his late 20s at the time – not exactly an éminence grise – so maybe it was the booze talking, or maybe he was just a very arrogant young man. In any case, as the years passed, the quip became a fact." When asked about it years later, Christgau said the title "seemed to push people's buttons, so I stuck with it. There's obviously no official hierarchy within rock criticism – only real academies can do that. But if you mean to ask whether I think some rock critics are better than others, you're damn straight I do. Don't you?" "For a long time he's been called the 'dean of American rock critics'", wrote "New York Times" literary critic Dwight Garner in 2015. "It's a line that started out as an offhanded joke. These days, few dispute it."


title: Robert Christgau

text: Christgau married fellow critic and writer Carola Dibbell in 1974; they have an adopted daughter, Nina, born in Honduras in 1986. He has said he was raised in a "born-again Church" in Queens, but has since become an atheist.


title: Robert Christgau

text: Christgau has been long, albeit argumentative, friends with critics such as Tom Hull, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus, and the late Ellen Willis, whom he dated from 1966 to 1969. He has also mentored younger critics such as Ann Powers and Chuck Eddy.


title: Claire Denis

text: Claire Denis (; born 21 April 1946) is a French film director and screenwriter. Her feature film "Beau Travail" (1999) has been called one of the greatest films of the 1990s, as well as of all time. Other acclaimed works include "Trouble Every Day" (2001), "35 Shots of Rum" (2008), "White Material" (2009), "High Life" (2018) and "Both Sides of the Blade" (2022), the last of which won her the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival. For her film "Stars at Noon" (2022), Denis competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. She won the Grand Prix, sharing the award with Lukas Dhont's film "Close".


title: Claire Denis

text: Her work has dealt with themes of colonial and post-colonial West Africa, as well as issues in modern France, and continues to influence European cinematic identity.


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis was born in Paris, but raised in colonial French Africa, where her father was a civil servant, living in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, French Somaliland, and Senegal. Her childhood spent living in West Africa with her parents and her younger sister colored her perspective on certain political issues. Their father told them that independence from France would be a good thing for these colonies. Her upbringing was a strong influence on her films, which have dealt with colonialism and post-colonialism in Africa. Her father moved with the family every two years because he wanted the children to learn about geography.


title: Claire Denis

text: Growing up in West Africa, Denis used to watch old and damaged copies of war films sent from the United States. As an adolescent she loved to read. Completing the required material while in school, at night she would sneak her mother's detective stories to read. At age 12, Denis was diagnosed with polio and returned to France for treatment. She lived in Sceaux, a suburb of Paris, for the rest of her teenage years. During her time in France, she felt unfit for living in France. She was educated for a life in Africa, and felt completely different from everyone around her.


title: Claire Denis

text: In 1969, Denis married a photographer she met at the age of 15, after being hired as his assistant. Due to the complex nature of having him in her private life but also as her teacher, they divorced soon after.


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis initially studied economics, but, she has said, "It was completely suicidal. Everything pissed me off." She then briefly studied Oriental languages and married a photographer who encouraged her to quit. In 1969 Denis studied at IDHEC (L'Institut des hautes études cinématographiques – now La Fémis) with her husband's encouragement. He told her she needed to figure out what she wanted to do. She graduated from the IDHEC and since 2002 has been a professor of film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.


title: Claire Denis

text: Before applying and being accepted into IDHEC, she worked as an intern at Télé Niger. After telling everyone that she wanted to apply to IDHEC, they told her, "no, don't waste your time studying, all you need to do is make films here with us".


title: Claire Denis

text: After graduating in 1971 and by this time divorced, Denis began working as an assistant director for many acclaimed filmmakers. Such films include Jacques Rivette's "Out 1" (1971), Denis Dusan Makavejev's "Sweet Movie" (1974), Robert Enrico's "The Old Gun" (1974), Eduardo de Gregorio's "Sérail" (1976) and Costa-Gavras's "Hanna K." (1983). After meeting Wim Wenders, Denis traveled to the U.S. to be the assistant director on "Paris, Texas" (1984) and "Wings of Desire" (1987). Wenders has said, "Claire was more than ready to make her own films. It would have been a waste to let her continue working as an assistant director". By working with so many directors Denis realized she wanted to make her own films to have more independence and ownership of her work.


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis's feature film debut, "Chocolat" (1988), is a semi-autobiographical meditation about a French woman reflecting on her childhood in Cameroon and her relationship with her family's African servant. While making it, Denis began collaborating with Jean-Pol Fargeau as a co-writer. They still work together. "Chocolat" was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes and praised by critics and audiences as a remarkable first film.


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis's second film, "Man No Run" (1989), is a documentary that follows a group of Cameroonian musicians, Les Têtes Brulées, touring France. It was considered an unusual second choice. Her next two narrative films were "No Fear, No Die" ("S'en fout la mort", 1990) and "I Can't Sleep" ("J'ai pas sommeil", 1994). The former is about illegal cockfighting, the latter about a serial killer who murders elderly women, inspired by a real case. Her next film, "Nénette et Boni" (1996), dives into the relationship between an alienated brother and his unhappily pregnant sister.


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis's fifth and arguably most renowned film is "Beau Travail" (1999). It is about soldiers in the French Foreign Legion in Djibouti and loosely based on Herman Melville's "Billy Budd" (1888). "Beau Travail" explores the themes of masculinity and obsession. Her next film, "Trouble Every Day" (2001), was a surprise, a horror film about a newlywed couple in Paris while the husband succumbs to sexually fueled cannibalism.


title: Claire Denis

text: Of Denis's next six films, five draw from preexisting texts and films. "Friday Night" ("Vendredi soir", 2002) is about two strangers who spend the night together the night before the woman is supposed to move in with her current lover. It was adapted from Emmanuèle Bernheim's novel of the same name. "The Intruder" ("L'Intrus", 2004) is based on Jean Luc Nancy's short memoir about a man receiving a heart transplant and reconnecting with his son. "35 Shots of Rum" ("35 rhums", 2008) is another of Denis's most acclaimed films, about a father's and daughter's changing relationship. It was inspired by Yasujirō Ozu's film "Late Spring" (1949). Her film "Bastards" ("Les Salauds", 2013) was inspired by Akira Kurosawa's "The Bad Sleep Well" ("Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru", 1960). "Let the Sunshine In" ("Un beau soleil intérieur") (2017) is a romantic comedy inspired by Roland Barthes's "" (1977). Of these, the only film not based on preexisting text is "White Material" (2009), which was co-written with Marie N'Diaye. It is about a white French woman in post-colonial Africa who stays during a rising civil conflict. Denis's most recent film is "High Life" (2018), which takes place on a prison spaceship.


title: Claire Denis

text: With films such as "US Go Home" (1994), "Nénette et Boni", "Beau Travail", "Trouble Every Day", and "Vendredi soir", Denis established a reputation as a filmmaker who "has been able to reconcile the lyricism of French cinema with the impulse to capture the often harsh face of contemporary France." She returned to Africa with "White Material", set in an unidentified country during a civil war.


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis has also made many short films spanning a multitude of subjects, such as "Le 15 Mai" (1969) while studying at IDHEC, "Keep It for Yourself" (1991) and "Voilà l'enchaînement" (2014). Her anthologies include "Pour Ushari Ahmed Mahmoud", "Soudan in Lest We Forget" ("Contre l'oubli", (1991). "US Go Home" (1994) is a segment in a series of hourlong films commissioned by Arte. "Nice, Very Nice" is a segment in "À propos de Nice, la suite" (1995) and "Towards Nancy" ("Vers Nancy") in "Ten Minutes Older:The Cello" (2002). Her documentaries include "Jacques Rivette, le veilleur" (Jacques Rivette, "the Watchman", 1990), "Towards Mathilde" ("Vers Mathilde", 2005) and "Venezia 70 – Future Reloaded" (2013). She also made the short film "Contact" (2014) for a light installation by Olafur Eliasson, who helped on the production design for "High Life".


title: Claire Denis

text: Common themes in Denis's work include obsession, desire, violence, sex, and the body. It also focuses on the feelings of being an outsider and belonging. Denis has said, "For me, the monster is invisible. If there is a small thread running through all my work, it is that evil is never the other, everything is inside and never outside."


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis is a highly collaborative filmmaker, saying in an interview, "the film becomes a relationship...and that is what's important, the relationship." The importance of collaboration can be seen throughout her work. She often recasts actors in multiple films, most notably Alex Descas, who has worked with Denis 11 times from 1990 to 2017, and Isaach de Bankolé, who appeared in three of her films from 1988 to 2009. Vincent Gallo, Béatrice Dalle, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Juliette Binoche and Grégoire Colin have also appeared in multiple Denis films. She most often collaborates with screenwriter Jean-Pol Fargeau, composer Stuart Staples of the band Tindersticks, and cinematographer Agnès Godard, whom she met in the 1970s at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. Asked about her screenwriting process, Denis said, "I often realize I have Isaach or Grégoire or someone else in mind" when writing scenes. She has also said that usually she "hold[s] no auditions" for her films.


title: Claire Denis

text: Fargeau has co-written ten of Denis's screenplays. Staples has composed eight of her films and Denis has said that he "has a rapport with the body, with flesh, with desire which is very close to mine". Nelly Quettier edited "I Can't Sleep", "Beau Travail", "Vendredi soir" and "The Intruder". Judy Shrewsbury has worked on every one of Denis's features for the last 20 years.


title: Claire Denis

text: Agnès Godard is one of Denis's most important collaborators, having worked on 11 of her films as a camera operator to the cinematographer in every film except "White Material" and "High Life".


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis has said that by collaborating with so many artists she has learned to trust the filmmaking process. She told Damon Smith: "What I got from Jacques Rivette was a complete trust in filmmaking, in actors, in acting...and a taste for endangering myself a little bit...From Wim [Wenders], I got another kind of trust, a trust in feeling very free with the camera and in designing a film not with an aesthetic, but with a complete trust of a location, in the light of the day." She also gives actors considerable freedom. In "Trouble Every Day" there are two onscreen murders where she let Gallo and Dalle do what they wished after the first scripted bite.


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis's collaborations go beyond her own films, as she has appeared in other directors' films, such as Laetitia Masson's "En avoir" (1995) and Tonie Marshall's "Vénus beauté" (1999). She shares screenwriting credit on Yousry Nasrallah's "El Medina" (2000). She also worked as an assistant director with Wim Wenders on "Paris, Texas" (1984) and "Wings of Desire" (1987), and with Jim Jarmusch on "Down by Law" (1986).


title: Claire Denis

text: In 2005, Denis was a member of the jury at the 27th Moscow International Film Festival. In 2011, she was a member of the jury at the Deauville American Film Festival.


title: Claire Denis

text: In 2006, Denis directed the video for the song "Incinerate" by Sonic Youth, from their album "Rather Ripped".


title: Claire Denis

text: "Bastards" was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Also that year, Denis was awarded the Stockholm Lifetime Achievement Award at the Stockholm Film Festival.


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis announced in 2015 that she was partnering with Zadie Smith for her English-language debut film, "High Life". Smith eventually left the project, causing a delay in filming. Denis went on to work on "Let the Sunshine In", which starred Juliette Binoche and was released in 2017.


title: Claire Denis

text: In 2018 Denis completed and released "High Life", her first English-language feature film, with Robert Pattinson cast as the lead. The film premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. It later had a limited U.S. release by American indie distributors A24. It was positively reviewed by many notable critics.


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis has been a member of multiple film festival boards, starting with the Venice Film Festival board in 2005. In 2019, she was the president of the board of the Cinéfondation and short films at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2020, she was the president of the board of the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival.


title: Claire Denis

text: Most of Denis's œuvre uses location work rather than studio work. She sometimes places her actors as if they were positioned for still photography. She uses longer takes with a stationary camera and frames things in long shot, resulting in fewer close ups. But Denis's cinematic and topical focus always remains relentlessly on her protagonists' faces and bodies. The subject's body in space, and how the particular terrain, weather, and color of the landscape influence and interact with the human subjects of her films maintains cinematic dominance.


title: Claire Denis

text: Tim Palmer explores Denis's work as a self-declared formalist and brilliant film stylist per se, an approach Denis has declared many times in interview to be as much about sounds, textures, colors and compositions as broader thematic concerns or social commitments.


title: Claire Denis

text: According to the Australian James Phillips, Denis rejects the marketable conventions of Hollywood cinema and frees the viewers of her films from the expectations of clichés.


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis combines history with personal history, giving her films an autobiographical element. This superimposition of the personal with the historical allows her films to be described as auteur cinema. She has worked in many genres, from horror ("Trouble Every Day") to romance and drama ("Friday Night"). Critics have noted recurring themes in her films, but Denis says she has no coherent vision of her career "trajectory".


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis has said that she is not concerned with film theory: "I am not at all interested in theories about cinema. I am only interested in images and people and sound... Film theory is just a pain in the ass." She focuses on "human" stories, no matter the setting of the film. Denis has said she does not aim to bring about radical social change or make the viewer feel better: "I'm not so sure films should be made to soothe people's pain. I don't want to be a social worker. I want to share something that is a vision, or a feeling." Her films' main focus is on the characters, often in moments of intense violence and emotion. "Anger is part of my relation to the world," she has said. "I'm filled with anger, I'm filled with regret, I'm filled with great memories, also poetic memories."


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis has said that the body is "central" to her work, and often uses skin, blood, and other bodily fluids to symbolize characters' feelings, as well as highlight relationships between them. In "Chocolat", skin is photographed prominently to accentuate the difference between the subservient and degrading nature of the dark-skinned Proteè's forced outdoor bathing and the shameless confidence of pale, white Luc, who chooses to do so. In "Trouble Every Day" and "High Life", bodily fluids are central to the stories, creating visceral disturbing images, and highlighting the films' "sexuality".


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis has directed a wide variety of films that span most known genres in her 30-year career, but is known for bending a genre's rules, often not obeying traditional rules of pacing or cinematography for established genres like horror, science fiction, and fantasy, focusing instead on the characters, their psyches, emotions and relationships. Though she has made horror movies and romantic comedies and dramas, Denis has never been concerned with making the scariest, funniest, or most heartbreaking films; she is only interested in telling the human story.


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis chooses the titles of her films carefully. Noëlle Rouxel-Cubberly argues that titles are intended to force the viewer to rethink a film's imagery and that Denis uses them to describe the raw reality of her films. For example, the title of "Chocolat" simultaneously refers to a racist term used during the period of the film, the cocoa exportation from Africa to Europe through a slave system, and the 1950s French expression ""être chocolat"", meaning "to be cheated".


title: Claire Denis

text: Denis is also known for "shooting fast, editing slowly". In general, she does a few takes on set and spends most of her time in the editing room, creating the film there. This post-production process often involves rearranging scenes out of the order in the script. For example, she placed the dance in "Beau Travail" at the end of the film though it was not at the end of the script. Of this process, Denis has said, "I'm always insecure when I'm making a film. I have doubts about myself but rarely about the actors."


title: Justin Kluivert

text: Justin Dean Kluivert (born 5 May 1999) is a Dutch professional footballer who plays as a winger for La Liga club Valencia, on loan from Serie A club Roma. He also represents the Netherlands national team.


title: Justin Kluivert

text: The son of former Dutch international football player Patrick Kluivert, and grandson of former Surinamese football player Kenneth Kluivert, Justin Kluivert began his career at Ajax, coming through the youth system. After playing for two seasons with the Dutch side, in 2018 Kluivert moved to Italian side Roma for €18.75 million. He also represented the Netherlands internationally, first at youth level from 2013, before making his senior debut in 2018.


title: Justin Kluivert

text: Born in Amsterdam, Kluivert came through the AFC Ajax youth program, and had his first professional contract with Ajax. He made his Eerste Divisie debut with Jong Ajax on 16 September 2016 in a game against MVV, replacing Vince Gino Dekker in the 67th minute, in a 1–0 away loss. He also played in the 2016–17 UEFA Youth League, in which he scored in a 2–0 group stage win at PAOK on 2 November.


title: Justin Kluivert

text: Kluivert made his first team debut in the Eredivisie on 15 January 2017 in a 1–3 away win against PEC Zwolle, when he replaced Amin Younes in the 39th minute. He scored his first Eredivisie goal on 19 March in an away match against SBV Excelsior, exactly 10 years and one day after his father's last career goal. The match ended in a 1–1 draw. He made six appearances in the 2016–17 UEFA Europa League, and was an unused substitute in the final, a 2–0 loss to Manchester United in Stockholm.


title: Justin Kluivert

text: On 26 November 2017, Kluivert opened his account for the season with a hat-trick in a 5–1 home win over Roda JC.


title: Justin Kluivert

text: On 12 June 2018, Kluivert moved to Italian club Roma, following a telephone call made by Roma legend Francesco Totti to his father, for €18.75 million. He became the fifth Dutch player ever to represent the Italian side. Kluivert chose the number 34 shirt number at Roma as a support for his good friend and former teammate Abdelhak Nouri, who wore it at Ajax; Nouri suffered a career-ending cardiac arrhythmia attack in 2017.


title: Justin Kluivert

text: Kluivert became the youngest Roma player to score in the UEFA Champions League after scoring the fourth goal in 5–0 home victory against Viktoria Plzeň on 3 October 2018. It was his first goal for the "Giallorossi", and he dedicated it to Nouri. On 16 December, he scored for the first time in the Serie A in a 3–2 home win over Genoa.


title: Justin Kluivert

text: On 5 October 2020, Kluivert joined Bundesliga club RB Leipzig on a season-long loan. On 5 December, he scored his first Bundesliga goal in a 3–3 away draw against Bayern Munich. On 8 December, he scored a goal in a 3–2 win over Manchester United in the 2020–21 UEFA Champions League.


title: Justin Kluivert

text: On 1 September 2022, Kluivert signed for Spanish club Valencia on loan for the 2022–23 season. A few days earlier, he was denied a work permit in England which canceled his transfer to Fulham.


title: Justin Kluivert

text: At the 2016 Under 17 Euros held in Azerbaijan, Kluivert played throughout the tournament in which the Netherlands reached the semi finals.


title: Justin Kluivert

text: Kluivert earned his first full international call-up in Ronald Koeman’s first Netherlands national football team in March 2018 for the friendlies against England and Portugal. He made his senior debut on 26 March, in a 3–0 win over the reigning European champions Portugal, at the Stade de Genève, replacing Memphis Depay for the final 12 minutes of the match.


title: Justin Kluivert

text: Justin Kluivert is the son of former Dutch international football player Patrick Kluivert, and grandson of former Surinamese football player Kenneth Kluivert. He is also of Curaçaoan descent through his paternal grandmother. Kluivert has four brothers, including footballer Ruben Kluivert who is currently playing for FC Utrecht.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: The Saint Thomas Christians, also called Syrian Christians of India, Marthoma Suriyani Nasrani, Malankara Nasrani, or Nasrani Mappila, are an ethno-religious community of Indian Christians in the state of Kerala (Malabar region), who, for the most part, employ the Eastern and Western liturgical rites of Syriac Christianity. They trace their origins to the evangelistic activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. The Saint Thomas Christians had been historically a part of the hierarchy of the Church of the East but are now divided into several different Eastern Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and independent bodies, each with their own liturgies and traditions. They are Malayalis and speak Malayalam. "Nasrani" or Nazarene is a Syriac term for Christians, who were among the first converts to Christianity in the Near East.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: Historically, this community was organised as the Province of India of the Church of the East by Patriarch Timothy I (780–823 AD) in the eighth century, served by bishops and a local dynastic archdeacon. In the 14th century, the Church of the East declined due to persecution by Tamerlane, and Portuguese colonial overtures to bring St Thomas Christians into the Latin Catholic Church, administered by their "Padroado" system in the 16th century, lead to the first of several rifts (schisms) in the community. The attempts of the Portuguese culminated in the Synod of Diamper, formally subjugating them and their whole Archdiocese of Angamaly as a suffragan see to the Archdiocese of Goa, which was under the Portuguese Padroado and celebrated the Roman Rite form of worship. Portuguese oppression provoked a violent resistance among the Thomasine Christians, that took expression in the Coonan Cross Oath protest in 1653. This led to the permanent schism among the Thomas' Christians of India, leading to the formation of "Puthenkūr" (New allegiance, pronounced "Pùttènkūṟ") and "Pazhayakūr" (Old allegiance, pronounced "Paḻayakūṟ") factions. The "Pazhayakūr" comprise the present day Syro-Malabar Church and Chaldean Syrian Church which continue to employ the original East Syriac Rite (Babylonian Rite /Persian Rite) liturgy. The Puthenkūr group, who resisted the Portuguese, under the leadership of archdeacon Thoma I, organized themselves as the independent Malankara Church, entered into a new communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch, and they inherited the West Syriac Rite from the Syriac Orthodox Church, which employs the Liturgy of Saint James, an ancient rite of the Church of Antioch, replacing the old East Syriac Rite liturgy.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: The Eastern Catholic faction is in full communion with the Holy See in Rome. This includes the aforementioned Syro-Malabar Church as well as the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, the latter arising from an Oriental Orthodox faction that entered into communion with Rome in 1930 under Bishop Geevarghese Ivanios (d. 1953). As such the Malankara Catholic Church employs the West Syriac liturgy of the Syriac Orthodox Church, while the Syro-Malabar Church employs the East Syriac liturgy of the historic Church of the East.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: The Oriental Orthodox faction includes the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, resulting from a split within the "Malankara Church" in 1912 over whether the church should be autocephalous or rather under the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch. As such, the Malankara Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Oriental Orthodox Church independent of the Patriarch of Antioch, whereas the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church is an integral part of the Syriac Orthodox Church and is headed by the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: The Iraq-based Assyrian Church of the East's archdiocese includes the Chaldean Syrian Church based in Thrissur. They were a minority faction within the Syro-Malabar Church, which split off and joined with the Church of the East Bishop during the 1870s. The Assyrian Church is one of the descendant churches of the Church of the East. Thus it forms the continuation of the traditional church of Saint Thomas Christians in India.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: Oriental Protestant denominations include the Mar Thoma Syrian Church and the St. Thomas Evangelical Church of India. The Marthoma Syrian Church were a part of the Malankara Church that went through a reformation movement under Abraham Malpan due to influence of British Anglican missionaries in the 1800s. The Mar Thoma Church employs a reformed variant of the liturgical West Syriac Rite. The St. Thomas Evangelical Church of India is an evangelical faction that split off from the Marthoma Church in 1961.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: CSI Syrian Christians are a minority faction of Malankara Syrian Christians, who joined the Anglican Church in 1836, and eventually became part of the Church of South India in 1947, after Indian independence. The C.S.I. is in full communion with the Mar Thoma Syrian Church. By the 20th century, various Syrian Christians joined Pentecostal and other evangelical denominations like the Kerala Brethren, Indian Pentecostal Church of God, Assemblies of God etc. They are known as Pentecostal Saint Thomas Christians.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: The Saint Thomas Christians have also been nicknamed such due to their reverence for Saint Thomas the Apostle, who is said to have brought Christianity to India. The name dates back to the period of Portuguese colonisation. They are also known, especially locally, as "Nasrani" or "Nasrani Mappila". The former means "Christian"; it appears to have been derived from the Hebrew word Netzer or the Aramaic Nasraya from Isaiah 11:1. "Nasrani" is evolved from the Syriac term for "Christian" that emerges from the Greek word "Nazōraioi", Nazarene in English. "Mappila" is an honorific applied to members of non-Indian faiths and descendants of immigrants from the middle east who had intermarried with the local population, including Muslims ("Jonaka Mappila") and Jews ("Yuda Mappila"). Some Syrian Christians of Travancore continue to attach this honorific title to their names. The Government of India designates members of the community as "Syrian Christians", a term originating with the Dutch colonial authority that distinguishes the Saint Thomas Christians, who used Syriac (within East Syriac Rite or West Syriac Rite) as their liturgical language, from newly evangelised Christians who followed the Roman Rite. The terms "Syrian" or "Syriac" relate not to their ethnicity but to their historical, religious and liturgical connection to the Church of the East, or East Syriac Church.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: Internally the Saint Thomas Christian community is divided into two ethnic factions, the majority "Vadakkumbhagar" or Northist and the minority "Tekkumbhagar" or Southist. Saint Thomas Christian tradition traces the origin of these ethno-geographical epithets to the city of Kodungallur, the historic capital of the medieval Chera dynasty. The early converts of Saint Thomas the Apostle and those who later joined the faith in India are believed to have initially resided on the northern side of the city of Kodungallur and for that reason became known as Vadakkumbhagar or Northist.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: In either the 4th or 8th century, the Syriac Christian merchant magnate Knai Thoma is noted to have arrived and settled in southern Kodungallur with a cohort of merchants and clergymen. Because they dwelled on the southern side, the descendants of Thoma’s migration became known as Tekkumbhagar or Southist. In time the Southist community became popularly known by the appellation "Knanaya" (Syriac for Canaanite), an adjectival epithet of Knai Thoma.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: The "Oxford History of the Christian Church" summarizes the division of the community in the following quote:


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: "In time, Jewish Christians of the most exclusive communities descended from settlers who accompanied Knayil Thomma (Kanayi) became known as ‘Southists’ (Tekkumbha ̄gar)...They distinguished between themselves and ‘Northists’ (Vatakkumbha ̄gar). The ‘Northists’, on the other hand, claimed direct descent from the very oldest Christians of the country, those who had been won to Christ by the Apostle Thomas himself. They had already long inhabited northern parts of Kodungallur. They had been there even before various waves of newcomers had arrived from the Babylonian or Mesopotamian provinces of Sassanian Persia."


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: According to tradition, Thomas the Apostle came to Muziris on the Kerala coast in AD 52 which is in present-day Pattanam, Kerala.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: The Cochin Jews are known to have existed in Kerala in the 1st century AD, and it was possible for an Aramaic-speaking Jew, such as St. Thomas from Galilee, to make a trip to Kerala then. The earliest known source connecting the Apostle to Northwest India, specifically the Indo-Parthian Kingdom is the "Acts of Thomas", likely written in the early 3rd century, perhaps in Edessa.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: A number of 3rd and 4th century Roman writers also mention Thomas' trip to India, including Ambrose of Milan, Gregory of Nazianzus, Jerome, and Ephrem the Syrian, while Eusebius of Caesarea records that St. Clement of Alexandria's teacher Pantaenus from Alexandria visited a Christian community in India using the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew language in the 2nd century.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: The tradition of origin of the Christians in Kerala is found in a version of the Songs of Thomas or "Thomma Parvam", written in 1601 and believed to be a summary of a larger and older work. Thomas is described as arriving in or around Maliankara and founding "Ēḻarappaḷḷikaḷ" (Seven great churches): Kodungallur, Kottakavu, Palayoor, Kokkamangalam, Nilackal, Niranam and Kollam. Some other churches, namely Thiruvithamcode Arappally (a "half church"), Malayattoor and Aruvithura are often called "Arappallikal". The "Thomma Parvam" also narrates the conversion of Jews, natives, and the local King at Kodungallur by St Thomas. It is possible that the Jews who became Christians at that time were absorbed by what became the Nasrani Community in Kerala. The "Thomma Parvam" further narrates St Thomas's mission in the rest of South India and his martyrdom at Mylapore in present-day Chennai, Tamil Nadu.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: According to legend, the community began with Thomas's conversion of 32 Nambudiri Brahmin families, namely Pakalomattom, Sankarapuri, Kalli, Kaliyankal, Koikara, Madapoor, Muttodal, Kottakara, Nedumpilly, Palackal, Panakkamattom, Kunnappilly, Vazhappilly, Payyappilly, Maliakkal, Pattamukku, Thaiyil etc. Of these families, Sankarapuri and Palamattam (Pakalomattom) were ordained and set apart for sacred orders and bishops. The priesthood has been practically hereditary in the two families, Sankarapuri and Palamattam, for several centuries with the inheritance in the female line


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: While there is much doubt on the cultural background of early Christians, there is evidence that some members of the St Thomas Christian community observed Brahmin customs in the Middle Ages, such as the wearing of the Upanayana (sacred thread) and having a kudumi. The medieval historian Pius Malekandathil believes these were customs adopted and privileges won during the beginning of the Brahmin dominance of medieval Kerala. He argues that the Syrian Christians in Kerala, integrated with Persian Christian migrant merchants, in the 9th century to become a powerful trading community and were granted the privileges by the local rulers to promote revenue generation and to undermine Buddhist and Jain traders who rivaled the Brahmins for religious and political hegemony in Kerala at the time.


title: Saint Thomas Christians

text: An organized Christian presence in India dates to the arrival of East Syriac settlers and missionaries from Persia, members of what would become the Church of the East, in around the 3rd century. Saint Thomas Christians trace the further growth of their community to the arrival of Jewish-Christians (early East Syriac Christians) from the region of Mesopotamia led by Knāi Thoma (anglicized as Thomas of Cana), which is said to have occurred either in the 4th or 8th century. The subgroup of the Saint Thomas Christians known as the Knanaya or Southists trace their lineage to Thomas of Cana, while the group known as the Northists claim descent from the early Christians evangelized by Thomas the Apostle. The traditional histories of the Thomas Christians note that the immigration of the Knanites reinvigorated the church of India, which was at the moment of their arrival deprived of ecclesial leadership. The arrival of the migrants is also associated with connecting the native Church of St. Thomas with the Syriac Christian tradition of the Church of the East.