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2000 Camp David Summit

The 2000 Camp David Summit was a summit meeting at Camp David between United States president Bill Clinton, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat. The summit took place between 11 and 25 July 2000 and was an effort to end the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The summit ended without an agreement, largely due to irreconcilable differences between Israelis and Palestinians on the status of Jerusalem. Its failure is considered one of the main triggers of the Second Intifada.

Reports of the outcome of the summit have been described as illustrating the Rashomon effect, in which the multiple witnesses gave contradictory and self-serving interpretations.

Summit
U.S. President Bill Clinton announced his invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat on 5 July 2000, to come to Camp David, Maryland, in order to continue their negotiations on the Middle East peace process. There was a hopeful precedent in the 1978 Camp David Accords where President Jimmy Carter was able to broker a peace agreement between Egypt, represented by President Anwar Sadat, and Israel represented by Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The Oslo Accords of 1993 between the later assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat had provided that agreement should be reached on all outstanding issues between the Palestinians and Israeli sides – the so-called final status settlement – within five years of the implementation of Palestinian autonomy. However, the interim process put in place under Oslo had fulfilled neither Israeli nor Palestinian expectations.

On 11 July, the Camp David 2000 Summit convened, although the Palestinians considered the summit premature. They even saw it as a trap. The summit ended on 25 July, without an agreement being reached. At its conclusion, a Trilateral Statement was issued defining the agreed principles to guide future negotiations.

Negotiations
The negotiations were based on an all-or-nothing approach, such that "nothing was considered agreed and binding until everything was agreed." The proposals were, for the most part, verbal. As no agreement was reached and there is no official written record of the proposals, some ambiguity remains over details of the positions of the parties on specific issues.

The talks ultimately failed to reach agreement on the final status issues:

 * Territory
 * Territorial contiguity
 * Jerusalem and the Temple Mount
 * Refugees and Palestinian right of return
 * Security arrangements
 * Settlements

Territory
The Palestinian negotiators indicated they wanted full Palestinian sovereignty over the entire West Bank and the Gaza Strip, although they would consider a one-to-one land swap with Israel. Their historic position was that Palestinians had already made a territorial compromise with Israel by accepting Israel's right to 78% of "historic Palestine", and accepting their state on the remaining 22% of such land. This consensus was expressed by Faisal Husseini when he remarked: "There can be no compromise on the compromise". They maintained that Resolution 242 calls for full Israeli withdrawal from these territories, which were captured in the Six-Day War, as part of a final peace settlement. In the 1993 Oslo Accords the Palestinian negotiators accepted the Green Line borders (1949 armistice lines) for the West Bank but the Israelis rejected this proposal and disputed the Palestinian interpretation of Resolution 242. Israel wanted to annex the numerous settlement blocks on the Palestinian side of the Green Line, and were concerned that a complete return to the 1967 borders was dangerous to Israel's security. The Palestinian and Israeli definition of the West Bank differs by approximately 5% land area as the Israeli definition does not include East Jerusalem (71 km2), the territorial waters of the Dead Sea (195 km2) and the area known as No Man's Land (50 km2 near Latrun).

Based on the Israeli definition of the West Bank, Barak offered to form a Palestinian state initially on 73% of the West Bank (that is, 27% less than the Green Line borders) and 100% of the Gaza Strip. In 10–25 years, the Palestinian state would expand to a maximum of 92% of the West Bank (91 percent of the West Bank and 1 percent from a land swap). From the Palestinian perspective this equated to an offer of a Palestinian state on a maximum of 86% of the West Bank.

According to Robert Wright, Israel would only keep the settlements with large populations. Wright states that all others would be dismantled, with the exception of Kiryat Arba (adjacent to the holy city of Hebron), which would be an Israeli enclave inside the Palestinian state, and would be linked to Israel by a bypass road. The West Bank would be split in the middle by an Israeli-controlled road from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, with free passage for Palestinians, although Israel reserved the right to close the road to passage in case of emergency. In return, Israel would allow the Palestinians to use a highway in the Negev to connect the West Bank with Gaza. Wright states that in the Israeli proposal, the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be linked by an elevated highway and an elevated railroad running through the Negev, ensuring safe and free passage for Palestinians. These would be under the sovereignty of Israel, and Israel reserved the right to close them to passage in case of emergency.

Israel would retain around 9% in the West Bank in exchange for 1% of land within the Green Line. The land that would be conceded included symbolic and cultural territories such as the Al-Aqsa Mosque, whereas the Israeli land conceded was unspecified. Additional to territorial concessions, Palestinian airspace would be controlled by Israel under Barak's offer. The Palestinians rejected the Halutza Sand region (78 km2) alongside the Gaza Strip as part of the land swap on the basis that it was of inferior quality to that which they would have to give up in the West Bank.

Territorial contiguity
In the proposed Palestinian state, Gaza Strip would be discontinuous from the West Bank. The degree to which the West Bank itself would be dis-contiguous is disputed. Noam Chomsky writes that the West Bank would have been divided into three cantons and Palestinian East Jerusalem would have constituted the fourth canton; all 4 cantons would be separated from one another by Israeli territory. Other sources also said that the proposed West Bank would be divided into three cantons. By contrast, Ehud Barak said the West Bank would only be divided by a wedge of Israeli territory stretching from Maale Adumim to the Jordan River, but would otherwise be continuous.

The Palestinians reacted strongly negatively to the proposed cantonization of the West Bank into three blocs, which the Palestinian delegation likened to South African Bantustans, a loaded word that was disputed by the Israeli and American negotiators. Settlement blocs, bypassed roads and annexed lands would create barriers between Nablus and Jenin with Ramallah. The Ramallah bloc would in turn be divided from Bethlehem and Hebron. A separate and smaller bloc would contain Jericho. Further, the border between West Bank and Jordan would additionally be under Israeli control. The Palestinian Authority would receive pockets of East Jerusalem which would be surrounded entirely by annexed lands in the West Bank.

East Jerusalem
A particularly virulent territorial dispute revolved around the final status of Jerusalem. Leaders were ill-prepared for the central role the Jerusalem issue in general and the Temple Mount dispute in particular would play in the negotiations. Barak instructed his delegates to treat the dispute as "the central issue that will decide the destiny of the negotiations" whereas Arafat admonished his delegation to "not budge on this one thing: the Haram (the Temple Mount) is more precious to me than everything else." At the opening of Camp David, Barak warned the Americans he could not accept giving the Palestinians more than a purely symbolic sovereignty over any part of East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians demanded complete sovereignty over East Jerusalem and its holy sites, in particular, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, which are located on the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif), a site holy in both Islam and Judaism, and the dismantling of all Israeli neighborhoods built over the Green Line. The Palestinian position, according to Mahmoud Abbas, at that time Arafat's chief negotiator, was that: "All of East Jerusalem should be returned to Palestinian sovereignty. The Jewish Quarter and Western Wall should be placed under Israeli authority, not Israeli sovereignty. An open city and cooperation on municipal services."

Israel proposed that the Palestinians be granted "custodianship," though not sovereignty, on the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif), with Israel retaining control over the Western Wall, a remnant of the ancient wall that surrounded the Temple Mount, the most sacred site in Judaism outside of the Temple Mount itself. Israeli negotiators also proposed that the Palestinians be granted administration of, but not sovereignty over, the Muslim and Christian Quarters of the Old City, with the Jewish and Armenian Quarters remaining in Israeli hands. Palestinians would be granted administrative control over all Islamic and Christian holy sites, and would be allowed to raise the Palestinian flag over them. A passage linking northern Jerusalem to Islamic and Christian holy sites would be annexed by the Palestinian state. The Israeli team proposed annexing to Israeli Jerusalem settlements within the West Bank beyond the Green Line, such as Ma'ale Adumim, Givat Ze'ev, and Gush Etzion. Israel proposed that the Palestinians merge certain outer Arab villages and small cities that had been annexed to Jerusalem just after 1967 (such as Abu Dis, al-Eizariya, 'Anata, A-Ram, and eastern Sawahre) to create the city of Al-Quds, which would serve as the capital of Palestine. The historically important Arab neighborhoods such as Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and at-Tur would remain under Israeli sovereignty, while Palestinians would only have civilian autonomy. The Palestinians would exercise civil and administrative autonomy in the outer Arab neighborhoods. Israeli neighborhoods within East Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty. The holy places in the Old City would enjoy independent religious administration. In total, Israel demanded that Palestine's territory in East Jerusalem be reduced to eight sections including six small enclaves according to Palestine's delegation to the summit. Palestinians objected to the lack of sovereignty and to the right of Israel to keep Jewish neighborhoods that it built over the Green Line in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claimed block the contiguity of the Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

Refugees and the right of return
Due to the first Arab-Israeli war, a significant number of Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes inside what is now Israel. These refugees numbered approximately 711,000 to 725,000 at the time. Today, they and their descendants number about four million, comprising about half the Palestinian people. Since that time, the Palestinians have demanded full implementation of the right of return, meaning that each refugee would be granted the option of returning to his or her home, with property restored, and receive compensation. Israelis asserted that allowing a right of return to Israel proper, rather than to the newly created Palestinian state, would mean an influx of Palestinians that would fundamentally alter the demographics of Israel, jeopardizing Israel's Jewish character and its existence as a whole.

At Camp David, the Palestinians maintained their traditional demand that the right of return be implemented. They demanded that Israel recognize the right of all refugees who so wished to settle in Israel, but to address Israel's demographic concerns, they promised that the right of return would be implemented via a mechanism agreed upon by both sides, which would try to channel a majority of refugees away from the option of returning to Israel. According to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, some of the Palestinian negotiators were willing to privately discuss a limit on the number of refugees who would be allowed to return to Israel. Palestinians who chose to return to Israel would do so gradually, with Israel absorbing 150,000 refugees every year.

The Israeli negotiators denied that Israel was responsible for the refugee problem, and were concerned that any right of return would pose a threat to Israel's Jewish character. In the Israeli proposal, a maximum of 100,000 refugees would be allowed to return to Israel on the basis of humanitarian considerations or family reunification. All other people classified as Palestinian refugees would be settled in their present place of inhabitance, the Palestinian state, or third-party countries. Israel would help fund their resettlement and absorption. An international fund of $30 billion would be set up, which Israel would help contribute to, along with other countries, that would register claims for compensation of property lost by Palestinian refugees and make payments within the limits of its resources.

Security arrangements
The Israeli negotiators proposed that Israel be allowed to set up radar stations inside the Palestinian state, and be allowed to use its airspace. Israel also wanted the right to deploy troops on Palestinian territory in the event of an emergency, and the stationing of an international force in the Jordan Valley. Palestinian authorities would maintain control of border crossings under temporary Israeli observation. Israel would maintain a permanent security presence along 15% of the Palestinian-Jordanian border. Israel also demanded that the Palestinian state be demilitarized with the exception of its paramilitary security forces, that it would not make alliances without Israeli approval or allow the introduction of foreign forces west of the Jordan River, and that it dismantle terrorist groups. One of Israel's strongest demands was that Arafat declare the conflict over, and make no further demands. Israel also wanted water resources in the West Bank to be shared by both sides and remain under Israeli management.

Palestinian proposal
According to Gilead Sher and others, Palestinians made counter-proposals of their own during the negotiations. Just like the Israeli proposals, sources differ on the details.

On territory, the Palestinian proposal gave Israel either 2.5% (according to Beinart ) or 3.1% (according to Emerson and Tocci ) of the West Bank. The proposal demanded any territory in occupied West Bank annexed by Israel be swapped one-to-one with territory inside Israel. Israel would have to evacuate Kiryat Arba and Hebron. A corridor between the West Bank and Gaza Strip was proposed for the movement of people and goods, via a narrow strip of Israeli land. The corridor would remain under Israeli sovereignty.

On Jerusalem, the Palestinians propose Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and Palestinian sovereignty over the Arab neighborhoods. In the Old City of Jerusalem, Israel would get the Jewish Quarter and parts of the Armenian Quarter, while Palestine would get the Muslim Quarter and the Christian Quarter. Israel would get the Western Wall, while Palestinians would get the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Palestinians proposed that instead of setting up border checkpoints inside Jerusalem, the border checkpoints should be set around the city. This meant Palestinians wishing to enter their own capital city would be treated as crossing an international border (and same with Israelis entering their capital). But once inside the city, citizens and traffic would be free to move around. If this was not acceptable to Israel, the Palestinian alternate proposal was to have a "hard border" between Israeli and Palestinian parts of Jerusalem.

On security, the Palestinian proposal allowed for an international military force (including Americans but not including Israelis ) to control the Palestinian state's border with Jordan. The State of Palestine would also coordinate with Israel for the Israeli Airforce to use the Palestinian airspace.

On refugees, Palestinian insisted on the Right of Return but the proposal would, according to Robert Malley, respect the "preservation of Israel's demographic balance between Jews and Arabs". Under the Palestinian proposal mechanisms would be created to make it more attractive for refugees to choose to settle any other place beside Israel. Erekat proposed that the return of Palestinian refugees from Lebanon serve as a "pilot" program to see whether refugees choose to return to Israel or go somewhere else. In this pilot program, Israel would admit 2,000 refugees per year over a 5-6 year period under the framework of family reunification.

Final Israeli proposal to the Palestinians
The proposals made to the Palestinians were never put into writing, but told orally to Palestinian negotiators. There are conflicting accounts as to what transpired. The following table summarizes what was finally offered to Palestinians, according to various sources.

 * {{legend|#CEECF2|Israeli source}}
 * {{legend|#D4F2CE|Palestinian source}}

Aftermath
In mid-October, Clinton and the parties held a summit in Sharm El Sheikh, resulting in a "Sharm memorandum" with understandings aimed at ending the violence and renewing security cooperation. From 18 to 23 December they held negotiations, followed by Clinton's presentation of his "parameters", in a last attempt to achieve peace in the Middle East before his second term ended in January 2001. Although the official statements stated that both parties had accepted the Clinton Parameters with reservations, these reservations in fact meant that the parties had rejected the parameters on certain essential points. On 2 January 2001, the Palestinians put forward their acceptance with some fundamental objections. Barak accepted the parameters with a 20-page letter of reservations. A Sharm el-Sheikh summit planned for 28 December did not take place.

Clinton's initiative led to the Taba negotiations in January 2001, where the two sides published a statement saying they had never been closer to agreement (though such issues as Jerusalem, the status of Gaza, and the Palestinian demand for compensation for refugees and their descendants remained unresolved), but Barak, facing elections, re-suspended the talks. Ehud Barak was to be defeated by Ariel Sharon in 2001.

Responsibility for failure
Which party (parties) should be blamed for the lack of success of the Summit is hotly debated. In a 2005 book published by Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, the authors state "Informed observer blamed all three parties' negotiation strategies for the failure", referring to the Israeli, Palestinians and Americans.

Accusations of Palestinian responsibility
Most of the Israeli and American criticism for the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit was leveled at Arafat. Ehud Barak portrays Arafat's behavior at Camp David as a "performance geared to exact as many Israeli concessions as possible without ever seriously intending to reach a peace settlement or sign an "end to the conflict".

Clinton blamed Arafat after the failure of the talks, stating, "I regret that in 2000 Arafat missed the opportunity to bring that nation into being and pray for the day when the dreams of the Palestinian people for a state and a better life will be realized in a just and lasting peace." The failure to come to an agreement was widely attributed to Yasser Arafat, as he walked away from the table without making a concrete counter-offer and because Arafat did little to quell the series of Palestinian riots that began shortly after the summit. Arafat was also accused of scuttling the talks by Nabil Amr, a former minister in the Palestinian Authority. In My Life, Clinton wrote that Arafat once complimented Clinton by telling him, "You are a great man." Clinton responded, "I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you made me one."

Dennis Ross, the US Middle East envoy and a key negotiator at the summit, summarized his perspectives in his book The Missing Peace. During a lecture in Australia, Ross suggested that the reason for the failure was Arafat's unwillingness to sign a final deal with Israel that would close the door on any of the Palestinians' maximum demands, particularly the right of return. Ross claimed that what Arafat really wanted was "a one-state solution. Not independent, adjacent Israeli and Palestinian states, but a single Arab state encompassing all of Historic Palestine". Ross also quoted Saudi Prince Bandar as saying while negotiations were taking place: "If Arafat does not accept what is available now, it won't be a tragedy; it will be a crime."

In his book, The Oslo Syndrome, Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry and historian Kenneth Levin summarized the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit in this manner: "despite the dimensions of the Israeli offer and intense pressure from President Clinton, Arafat demurred. He apparently was indeed unwilling, no matter what the Israeli concessions, to sign an agreement that declared itself final and forswore any further Palestinian claims." Levin argues that both the Israelis and the Americans were naive in expecting that Arafat would agree to give up the idea of a literal "right of return" for all Palestinians into Israel proper no matter how many 1948 refugees or how much monetary compensation Israel offered.

Alan Dershowitz, an Israel advocate and a law professor at Harvard University, said that the failure of the negotiations was due to "the refusal of the Palestinians and Arafat to give up the right of return. That was the sticking point. It wasn't Jerusalem.  It wasn't borders. It was the right of return." He claimed that President Clinton told this to him "directly and personally."

Accusations of Israeli and American responsibility
Robert Malley, part of the Clinton administration and present at the summit, wrote to dispel three "myths" regarding the summit's failure. First myth, Malley says, was "Camp David was an ideal test of Mr. Arafat's intentions". Malley recalls that Arafat didn't think that Israeli and Palestinian diplomats had sufficiently narrowed issues in preparation for the summit and that the Summit happened at a "low point" in the relations between Arafat and Barak. The second myth was "Israel's offer met most if not all of the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations". According to Malley, Arafat was told that Israel would not only retain sovereignty over some Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, but Haram al Sharif too, and Arafat was also asked to accept an unfavorable 9-to-1 ratio in land swaps. The third myth was that "The Palestinians made no concession of their own". Malley pointed out that the Palestinians starting position was at the 1967 borders, but they were ready to give up Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and parts of the West Bank with Israeli settlements. Further, the Palestinians were willing to implement the right of return in a way that guaranteed Israel's demographic interests. He argues that Arafat was far more compromising in his negotiations with Israel than Anwar el-Sadat or King Hussein of Jordan had been when they negotiated with Israel.

Clayton Swisher wrote a rebuttal to Clinton and Ross's accounts about the causes for the breakdown of the Camp David Summit in his 2004 book, The Truth About Camp David. Swisher, the Director of Programs at the Middle East Institute, concluded that the Israelis and the Americans were at least as guilty as the Palestinians for the collapse. M.J. Rosenberg praised the book: "Clayton Swisher's 'The Truth About Camp David,' based on interviews with [US negotiators] Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross and [Aaron] Miller himself provides a comprehensive and acute account – the best we're likely to see – on the [one-sided diplomacy] Miller describes."

Shlomo Ben-Ami, then Israel's Minister of Foreign Relations who participated in the talks, stated that the Palestinians wanted the immediate withdrawal of the Israelis from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and only subsequently the Palestinian authority would dismantle the Palestinian organizations. The Israeli response was "we can't accept the demand for a return to the borders of June 1967 as a pre-condition for the negotiation." In 2006, Shlomo Ben-Ami stated on Democracy Now! that "Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well. This is something I put in the book. But Taba is the problem. The Clinton parameters are the problem" referring to his 2001 book Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy.

Norman Finkelstein published an article in the winter 2007 issue of Journal of Palestine Studies, excerpting from his longer essay called Subordinating Palestinian Rights to Israeli "Needs". The abstract for the article states: "In particular, it examines the assumptions informing Ross’s account of what happened during the negotiations and why, and the distortions that spring from these assumptions. Judged from the perspective of Palestinians' and Israelis' respective rights under international law, all the concessions at Camp David came from the Palestinian side, none from the Israeli side."

Berkeley political science professor Ron Hassner has argued that it was the failure of participants at the negotiations to include religious leaders in the process or even consult with religious experts prior to the negotiations, that led to the collapse of the negotiations over the subject of Jerusalem. "Both parties seem to have assumed that the religious dimensions of the dispute could be ignored. As a result, neither party had prepared seriously for the possibility that the Temple Mount issue would come to stand at the heart of the negotiations." Political Scientist Menahem Klein, who advised the Israeli government during the negotiations, confirmed that "The professional back channels did not sufficiently treat Jerusalem as a religious city... It was easier to conduct discussions about preservation of historical structures in the old city than to discuss the link between the political sanctity and the religious sanctity at the historical and religious heart of the city."

Public opinion towards the summit
The Palestinian public was supportive of Arafat's role in the negotiations. After the summit, Arafat's approval rating increased seven percentage points from 39 to 46%. Overall, 68% of the Palestinian public thought Arafat's positions on a final agreement at Camp David were just right and 14% thought Arafat compromised too much while only 6% thought Arafat had not compromised enough.

Barak did not fare as well in public opinion polls. Only 25% of the Israeli public thought his positions on Camp David were just right as opposed to 58% of the public that thought Barak compromised too much. A majority of Israelis were opposed to Barak's position on every issue discussed at Camp David except for security.

Concluding Trilateral statement (full text)
"25 July 2000

President William J. Clinton

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat Between 11 and 24 July, under the auspices of President Clinton, Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat met at Camp David in an effort to reach an agreement on permanent status. While they were not able to bridge the gaps and reach an agreement, their negotiations were unprecedented in both scope and detail. Building on the progress achieved at Camp David, the two leaders agreed on the following principles to guide their negotiations:

 * 1) The two sides agreed that the aim of their negotiations is to put an end to decades of conflict and achieve a just and lasting peace.
 * 2) The two sides commit themselves to continue their efforts to conclude an agreement on all permanent status issues as soon as possible.
 * 3) Both sides agree that negotiations based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 are the only way to achieve such an agreement and they undertake to create an environment for negotiations free from pressure, intimidation and threats of violence.
 * 4) The two sides understand the importance of avoiding unilateral actions that prejudge the outcome of negotiations and that their differences will be resolved only by good faith negotiations.
 * 5) Both sides agree that the United States remains a vital partner in the search for peace and will continue to consult closely with President Clinton and Secretary Albright in the period ahead."

General

 * Principles of Camp David's "American Plan". FMEP, Settlement Report, September–October 2000. American proposals, as reported in Ha'aretz and Yediot Aharanot.
 * Interview with Dennis Ross about the summit
 * More recent interview with Dennis Ross about the summit
 * Several articles on the 2000 summit, including interviews with Clinton and Ben-Ami at the Jewish Virtual Library
 * Camp David offer according to Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs
 * The Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David- July 2000 Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Maps

 * Camp David proposal maps (with explanations) according to MidEastWeb.
 * Palestinian Maps of the Camp David 2 Proposals.
 * West Bank Final Status Map Presented By Israel, May 2000 Foundation for Middle East Peace.
 * Peres Center for Peace.
 * Maps: Israeli proposals, from Camp David (2000) to Taba (2001)
 * Failed compromise at Camp David. December 2000 English article in Le Monde diplomatique refers to some of the above-linked French-language maps.
 * and, Orient House, 2000
 * Barak's generous offers. Gush Shalom.

New York Review of Books series

 * Robert Malley and Hussein Agha. "Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors," New York Review of Books, 9 August 2001
 * Dennis Ross, Gidi Grinstein, Hussein Agha, Robert Malley. "Camp David: An Exchange." New York Review of Books, 20 September 2001
 * Camp David and After: An Exchange (1. An Interview with Ehud Barak), by Benny Morris, in response to "Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors") 13 June 2002
 * Camp David and After: An Exchange (2. A Reply to Ehud Barak) By Hussein Agha, Robert Malley, 13 June 2002
 * Camp David and After – Continued Benny Morris, Ehud Barak, Reply by Hussein Agha, Robert Malley, 27 June 2002

Views and analysis

 * Comparing Camp David I and II, Dr. Kenneth W. Stein, Emory University
 * "Was Arafat the Problem?" by Robert Wright
 * "Barak: A Villa in the Jungle." Uri Avnery, July 2002
 * "The Day Barak's Bubble Burst". 15 Sept. 2001 article, by Uri Avnery, a founder of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom. More of their articles about Camp David are here.
 * Jerome M. Segal, "The Palestinian Peace Offer," originally published in Ha'aretz, 1 October 2001
 * Visions in Collision: What Happened at Camp David and Taba?, Dr. Jeremy Pressman, 2003.

title: 2000 Camp David Summit


text:
Talk:Chuck Palahniuk

A-class or not
I've quick-failed an A-class review of the Biography project, because there are two fair use images without fair use rationales, and entire sections are without references. As this is sufficient to quick-fail a GA review, it must quick-fail an A-class review as well. B-class is the highest it can get for now. Er rab ee 13:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Removal of "References In popular culture" section
I've removed this entire section because A) WP discourages trivia sections, and that's what this was; and B) most of it was unreferenced—and unreferenced material may be removed at any time, per WP:V—and the references for the Panic at the Disco! material were not to a reliable source but to a discussion board. If this material is returned to the article it should be properly sourced, and, rather than just given as a list of trivia, it should be rendered in prose and integrated with the article as a whole. -- Shelf Skewed  Talk  12:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
 * This anti-trivia Wikipedia policy is so sad. Sometimes the most interesting part of the article is in the trivia. For a long time after explicit formulation of the policy, trivia sections continued to exist, but now enlightened wikipedians are going around deleting them. Someone should start a trivipedia or a WikipediB that does not desire to emulate a print encylopedia. The last link I can find to the deleted Chuck Palahniuk trivia section contains mention of his theorey that the same laugh tracks have been used since their invention in the 50's. Perhaps trivia-section-deleting illuminati might be so kind as to give a link to the trivia section, or even allow its continuation on the talk page. I see that happening on other pages. --Timtak (talk) 03:18, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I concur, the removal of the trivia has made the reading of articles less interesting. --DavidD4scnrt (talk) 09:28, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

it takes a lot more effort to create than to destroy. a lot of those deletions are indistinguishable from malicious vandalism. what you can do is revert the deletion and make it clear that the policy is to "merge" the trivia into more relevant places. A Trivia section is allowed but only as a last resort if no better place can be found to put the material. It is also important that the trivia section be well referenced. In many cases it is possible to restore a lot of content from a trivia section and even now you could still dig through the article history and start work on merging the best of it into relevant places. -- Horkana (talk) 15:59, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Image deleted
I hid the image Palahniuk_books.JPG with tags since it was deleted from wikimedia commons. I left all the info in the page in case someone knows if the image had a copyright on it or not, as it could be reuploaded. The image in question.

--Kevman459 (talk) 04:26, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Criticism
Speaking as someone who's not admittedly altogether familar with Palahniuk's work (I've read one or two of his books, but I liked them), I think the criticism section is either biased and/or slanted. Is this really the general consensus of his work? I understand that he's controversial, but I find it hard to believe that there's never been any reviews or reliable sources that attempt to counter them. I mean, I could just as easily make an almost identical criticism section for 90% of the published authors out there, including J.R.R. Tolkien or J. K. Rowling. On a related note, the first part referred to an article that's no longer there, so I removed it.--CyberGhostface (talk) 00:13, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Well, a Criticism section is generally going to include sources that are biased against the target. But are you arguing that a criticism section shouldn't exist at all? Ashmoo (talk) 08:09, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, look at Chronicles of Narnia's section on 'criticism' (renamed to 'controversies'). Although there's a lot of weight given to Philip Pullman ranting, there's also some attempts to include rebuttals by other people. I think at the very least the same could be done here.
 * Although, if you want my opinion, I think criticism would be better suited for individual articles on his novels and not heaped together on his own article.--CyberGhostface (talk) 14:45, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Having also worked on the Chronicles of Narnia section you mentioned, I agree in principal. However, when including 'rebuttals' we must ensure that the section doesn't turn into a back-and-forth forum style debate. The best way to do this is to insist on WP:N & WP:RS commentaries. Ashmoo (talk) 09:14, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Is he really homosexual?
Is he really gay? Or is someone making it up? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.51.65.172 (talk) 08:03, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, he's gay.--CyberGhostface (talk) 21:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
 * He talks about it briefly in a new article in the London Times, re about his never discussing his homosexuality with his father, etc. See: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4396841.ece67.142.130.49 (talk) 19:28, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * So why isn't this discussed in the WP article? I remember it being included about a year ago or so.  This is a really important part of who he is and I also think it's important for many other reasons as well.  And there's thousands of other WP articles on gay people that explicitly reference their homosexuality.  I plan to either add it or reverse the changes in a week or so if no one has a reason why it shouldn't be in the article. --Evolross (talk) 21:29, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * There's no (good) reason to remove it, so by all means, add it back in.--CyberGhostface (talk) 23:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * All the information about how he was "outed" is also missing including his threatening message to the author of the magazine article that outed him. That stuff should all be back in here and it used to be.  I'm not sure why anyone would remove that unless someone was purposely "cleansing" this article...--Evolross (talk) 18:13, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Then restore the edits if you have the proper citations.--CyberGhostface (talk) 18:55, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm glad to see that it has been restored. However I think it should be under a "Personal Life" section and not mixed in with his career information.  Anyone opposed to that reorganization?  Most articles referring to people put this kind of information in a "Personal Life" section.Evolross (talk) 20:30, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

 * I agree, it really has no relation to his career at large yet should definitely be included in the article. I encourage whoever knows the proper citations to make a Personal Life section and move the info there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.190.34.219 (talk) 01:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Photograph of Author
Palahniuk now looks not much like the author picture shown in the article. For Palahniuk now (he is a massive, a rather monumental bodybuilder type now), see the London Times: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4396841.ece —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.130.49 (talk) 19:29, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, Wikipedia's policy is that free photos must be used over fair use, no matter how out of date or poor quality said photo may be. (For example, this used to be Stan Lee's main photo before I replaced it with this.) But if you can find a free photo of Chuck Palahniuk that's better than the current one, then you should definitely replace the current one. My recommendation would be to go to Flickr and either A.) Find a suitable image that's already commons-licensed or B.) Ask the owner to release it into the public domain for Wikipedia. That's where I've gotten most of my mine from.--CyberGhostface (talk) 21:50, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

replaced w/ new --Wiseoleman17 (talk) 06:40, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank, that's a good pic.--CyberGhostface (talk) 19:16, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Qualification of Subject
Classification of Chuck Palahniuk as a Western Philosopher seems justifiable. Flux (talk) 07:15, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Criticism section
My main problem with is this is that there's no balance to it. It's just negative reviews. Palahniuk isn't the literary equivalent of Gigli--he's received a number of positive reviews. I think the article would be better benefited by having the section be about critical reaction both good and bad. And before anyone says "So fix it yourself", I'm not able to for a number of reasons, so that's why the maintenance templates are there in the first place, to direct editors to them.--CyberGhostface (talk) 19:12, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

2011
My point still stands three years later. Just because nothing has been done doesn't mean that the template should be removed. The section as-is still faulty. I don't see why this article needs a section devoted to just negative reviews. It would be like making a "criticism" section for Stephen King and just posting all the negative reviews that he has received over the years. Short of him being Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, it shouldn't be impossible to write a more neutral section that focuses both on positive and negative critical reception.--CyberGhostface (talk) 00:54, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

2012
Okay, I've removed it for the time being as nothing has been done or discussed in the four years since I've brought it to attention. Hopefully this won't be a problem for anyone.--CyberGhostface (talk) 23:40, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

2014
OK, I've come back to this article after many years, and see that the criticism section is gone. I agree that being entirely focused on negative criticism is a problem, but the solution is to add more balanced criticism rather than remove it altogether. I'm going to dig up to old section and re-include unless someone gives a reasonable objection. (And hopefully balance out the criticism). Ashmoo (talk) 15:40, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I've re-included the criticism section. I also spent an hour searching the internet for book reviews. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to find any reviews that were positive about Palahniuk in general. Some reviews were positive about individual books, but only reviewers who hate him chose to assess his style as a whole. I will keep looking for more even handed assessments. However, if none exist, I think that is also an acceptable outcome and does not violate WP:Neutral. Some artists are generally disliked by professional critics but still have a popular following, and if this is the case with Chuck, the article should reflect that. Ashmoo (talk) 08:32, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Criticism section (2010)
I cleaned up the formatting of the criticism section because as it is it's somewhat awkward and clumsy. I also re-added a passage, that Palahniuk's work has been compared to "Goosebumps for adults." I think this is relevant criticism, and anyone who knows anything about literature would agree with it. The reason that Michiko Kakutani hasn't torn any of his books apart yet is because they aren't worth a serious critic's time. Whoever keeps deleting it should provide justification. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.47.2.174 (talk) 14:11, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

 * The "Goosebumps" comment has been removed by two different editors, most recently by me, because it was added without a supporting reference and had the appearance of being just a random potshot. If the "Goosebumps" description can be supported with a reference from a reliable source, then please provide it. I reverted the other changes you made because you took a paragraph that was directly related to the one above--the paragraph on the Salon piece, followed by Palahniuk's response to it--and moved it down so that it appeared that Palahniuk's response was to criticism in general and not to the Salon piece specifically.-- Shelf Skewed  Talk  14:27, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Tell-All
Is he anti-semitic? I read the first few paragraphs of this book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.87.130.64 (talk) 11:05, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know how you would get that impression from the first chapter of Tell-All. Plus, you certainly can't judge a person's character from a single chapter out of his entire bibliography.  I have never gotten the feeling that he is a anti-semitic, and I've read all of his work.--–m.f (t • c) 13:08, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

WP:RSN
I have responded to the Rfc placed at Reliable_sources/Noticeboard. Location (talk) 01:24, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

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OE source

 * https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/palahniuk_chuck_1962_/#.WUaxfRiZNo4 --- Another Believer ( Talk ) 17:00, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

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image
I've updated the infobox image to this one (a close-up -- the previous one was 11 years old). There's also this one, which would be better if he weren't looking in a weird direction. Opening this thread because I got a couple more, um, fun? pictures but I'm not sure if they would be appropriate for the article. At his BookCon autographing booth, when fans wanted to take a photo with him, he offered to put them in a choke hold for the picture. Definitely the most unusual author-fan interaction I saw. :) one, two, three. I opted not to add them, but figured I'd leave them here should someone disagree (I don't know how the fan in the pictures is, btw). — Rhododendrites  talk \\ 15:15, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

 * Thanks for updating the image, I like this new one better (especially considering the age of the previous infobox photo). I have a picture of him putting me in a chokehold from an event a couple years ago, and another of us in a fighting pose. I love that he does that at events. But, I think I agree – probably not fit for this article. – Broccoli & Coffee (Oh hai) 18:10, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Ha, I didn't know that was a regular move for him. It's a good gimmick, I guess. Not much variation among everyone else. Well, except, of course, for Mary Higgins Clark who insisted on punching people in the face while making devil horns at the camera with her other hand. this is not true — Rhododendrites  talk \\ 20:43, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Controversy tag in the Reception and criticism section necessary?
Is the tag in the Reception and criticism section necessary? It seems to be saying that the info needs to be integrated into the rest of the page somehow ... unless I'm misreading it? I don't know, just seems like Palahniuk is definitely a contentious, controversial dude so having a separate criticism section makes sense. It speaks to a pretty widely held view of him, held by both fans and critics. Why have the tag there? Tactical Fiend (talk) 00:26, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

More sources
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/81751-is-chuck-palahniuk-too-big-to-fail.html?consumer WhisperToMe (talk) 07:36, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Chuck Palahniuk


text:
Accounting standard

Publicly traded companies typically are subject to rigorous standards. Small and midsized businesses often follow more simplified standards, plus any specific disclosures required by their specific lenders and shareholders. Some firms operate on the cash method of accounting which can often be simple and straightforward. Larger firms most often operate on an accrual basis. Accrual basis is one of the fundamental accounting assumptions and if it is followed by the company while preparing the Financial statements then no further disclosure is required. Accounting standards prescribe in considerable detail what accruals must be made, how the financial statements are to be presented, and what additional disclosures are required.

Some important elements that accounting standards cover include identifying the exact entity which is reporting, discussing any "going concern" questions, specifying monetary units, and reporting time frames.

In the public sector, 30% of 165 governments surveyed used accrual accounting, rather than cash accounting, in 2020.

Limitations
The notable limitations of accounting standards are their inflexibility, time-consuming process to create them, the difficulty of choosing between alternative treatments and their restrictive scope. Accounting standards were largely written in the early 21st century. Massive accounting irregularities at large firms such as Worldcom and Enron illustrate that, despite all these efforts, widespread fraud can still occur, and even be missed by the outside auditors.

Benefits of accounting standards
The lack of transparent accounting standards in some nations has been cited as increasing the difficulty of doing business in them. In particular, the Asian financial meltdown in the late 1990s has been partially attributed to the lack of detailed accounting standards. Giant firms in some Asian countries were able to take advantage of their poorly devised accounting standards to cover up immense debts and losses, which yielded a collective effect that eventually led the whole region into financial crisis.

Common accounting standards around the globe

 * International Financial Reporting Standards

This standard is adopted in whole, or in large part, by many countries. It is acceptable in the U.S. (for a firm located outside of the U.S.) to report in this widely accepted format.

Accounting standards by nation

 * Canada – Generally Accepted Accounting Principles ( Canada)
 * China – Chinese Accounting Standards (Zhōngguó qǐyè kuàijì zhǔnzé 中国企业会计准则)
 * France – Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (Plan Comptable Général)
 * Germany – Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (Grundsätze ordnungsmäßiger Buchführung)
 * India – Indian Accounting Standards (Ind_AS) can be used by Any Company within the rules and regulations under  Companies Act,2013  And Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (USA) is used by Foreign and Multinational company in India
 * Italy – Principi contabili nazionali
 * Luxembourg - Luxembourg Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (Lux GAAP)
 * Nepal – Nepal Financial Reporting Standards
 * Russia – Russian GAAP
 * Sweden – BAS (accounting)
 * Switzerland – Swiss GAAP FER (Fachempfehlungen zur Rechnungslegung)
 * Turkey – Uniform Accounting Plan (Turkey)
 * United Kingdom – Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (UK)
 * United States – Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (United States) Domestic firms typically report in this format. Foreign firms that trade in the U.S. typically report in IFRS format (below).

Global standardization and IFRS
Many countries use or are converging on the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) that were established and are maintained by the International Accounting Standards Board. In some countries, local accounting principles are applied for regular companies but listed or large companies must conform to IFRS, so statutory reporting is comparable internationally.

All listed and grouped EU companies have been required to use IFRS since 2005, Canada moved in 2009, Taiwan in 2013, and other countries are adopting local versions.

In the United States, while "... the SEC published a statement of continued support for a single set of high-quality, globally accepted accounting standards, and acknowledged that IFRS is best positioned to serve this role..." progress is less evident.

title: Accounting standard


text:
Mike Piazza

Michael Joseph Piazza ( born September 4, 1968) is an American former professional baseball catcher who played 16 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1992 to 2007. He currently serves as the manager of the Italian national baseball team. He played most notably for the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers, while also having brief stints with the Florida Marlins, San Diego Padres, and Oakland Athletics. A 12-time All-Star and 10-time Silver Slugger Award winner at catcher, Piazza produced strong offensive numbers at his position; in his career, he recorded 427 home runs—a record 396 of which were hit as catcher—along with a .308 batting average and 1,335 runs batted in (RBI).

Piazza was drafted by the Dodgers in the 1988 MLB draft as a favor from Tommy Lasorda to Piazza's father. He was the last player selected and signed in his draft class to play in the Major Leagues. Initially a first baseman, Piazza converted to catcher in the minor leagues at Lasorda's suggestion to improve his chances of being promoted. He made his major league debut in 1992 and the following year was named the National League (NL) Rookie of the Year and was an All-Star for the first of 10 consecutive seasons. Piazza immediately impressed with his ability to hit for power and average. His best year as a Dodger came in 1997 when he batted .362, hit 40 home runs, and had 124 RBI, leading to a runner-up finish in voting for the NL Most Valuable Player Award. In 1998, he was traded to the Marlins and then a week later to the Mets, with whom he spent most of the remainder of his career. He helped the Mets reach the 2000 World Series, the only World Series appearance of his career. After the 2005 season, Piazza left the Mets to play one season each for the Padres and Athletics before retiring after the 2007 season.

Piazza is regarded as one of the best offensive catchers in baseball history. He had at least one RBI in 15 straight games for the Mets in 2000, the second-longest RBI streak ever. In 2013, the Mets inducted Piazza into the New York Mets Hall of Fame. In 2016, Piazza was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, receiving 82.95% of the vote and wearing a Mets hat in his plaque. Piazza owned the Italian soccer team A.C. Reggiana 1919, which played for two seasons (2017–2018) in Serie C under his leadership before its non-registration due to continued financial troubles.

Early life
Piazza was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, grew up in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, and attended Phoenixville Area High School. He is the second-oldest son of an Italian father named Vince (1932–2021) and a Slovak mother named Veronica, with brothers Vince Jr., Dan, Tony, and Tom. His father was the son of Italian immigrants from Sciacca, Sicily. Tom's godfather was former MLB manager Tommy Lasorda. Mike grew up a Philadelphia Phillies fan and fan of Philadelphia sports, and admiring Hall of Fame third baseman Mike Schmidt. Piazza watched the Philadelphia 76ers court side in their January 1983 game when Julius Erving performed a defensive play by swiping the ball and completing his famous Rock-a-Baby dunk, which Piazza cited as one of his indelible childhood memories as a sports fan. Vince Piazza earned a fortune of more than $100 million in used cars and real estate, and attempted several times to purchase an MLB franchise. When the Dodgers—managed by Vince's childhood friend Tommy Lasorda, the godfather of Mike Piazza's youngest brother, Tommy —visited Philadelphia, Piazza visited the Dodger clubhouse and served as a bat boy in the dugout.

Vince's own hopes of playing baseball had ended at the age of 16 when he left school to support his family. He saw that Piazza had potential in the sport, and began encouraging his son to build his arm strength at the age of five. When he was 16, Piazza received personal instruction in his backyard batting cage from Ted Williams. The Hall of Famer praised his talent, advised him not to let anyone change his swing, and autographed Piazza's copy of Williams' The Science of Hitting. Vince threw hundreds of pitches nightly to his son, who shared his father's focus on baseball, clearing snow if necessary to practice his hitting and, after reaching the major leagues, practicing on Christmas Eve. Piazza graduated from Phoenixville Area High School in 1986, after which he went to South Florida and joined the Miami Hurricanes his freshman year; receiving no playing time that season, Piazza transferred to Miami-Dade Community College. Piazza played first base at Miami-Dade in 1988. In 29 games, he hit .364 with three home runs and drove in 23 runs.

Los Angeles Dodgers
After his father asked Lasorda to select Piazza as a favor, the Miami-Dade Community College student was drafted by the Dodgers in the 62nd round of the 1988 MLB amateur draft as the 1,390th player picked out of 1,395 players. Lasorda asked Piazza to give up his first base position and learn how to catch to improve his chances of reaching the major leagues and helped him attend a special training camp for catchers in the Dominican Republic. Piazza became an excellent hitter, especially for a catcher. His MLB debut came with the Dodgers on September 1, 1992, against the Chicago Cubs. He drew a walk in his first plate appearance and then doubled to deep center field in his first official at-bat, against Mike Harkey of the Cubs. He hit his first home run on September 12, 1992, against Steve Reed of the San Francisco Giants. He only appeared in 21 games that season, hitting .232.

Piazza won the NL Rookie of the Year Award in 1993 after appearing in 149 games, hitting .318, slugging 35 home runs, and driving in 112 RBI. He was also selected to the 1993 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, his first of 10 consecutive (and 12 total) All-Star appearances. Until Joc Pederson passed him in 2015, Piazza's 18 home runs before the All-Star break was a Dodgers' rookie record. In 1996, Piazza hit .336 with 36 home runs and 105 RBI, finishing second in NL MVP voting, behind Ken Caminiti. Piazza's best season with the Dodgers came in 1997, when he hit .362, with 40 home runs, 124 RBI, an on-base percentage of .431, and a slugging percentage of .638. He became the first catcher in MLB history to get 200 hits in a season. He finished second in NL MVP voting for the second straight year, behind Larry Walker.

Florida Marlins
Piazza played seven seasons for the Dodgers before he was traded to the Florida Marlins on May 15, 1998, after an offseason in which Piazza wanted a new contract prior to his eligibility for arbitration; Piazza wanted $105 million for seven years while the Dodgers offered $76 million for six years. Piazza blasted the Dodgers when his demands were criticized by fans and the media, blaming Vin Scully in particular. Piazza and Todd Zeile went to the Marlins in return for Gary Sheffield, Charles Johnson, Bobby Bonilla, Manuel Barrios, and Jim Eisenreich. He only appeared in five games with the Marlins, where he hit .278.

New York Mets
One week later, on May 22, Piazza was traded from the Marlins to the New York Mets for Preston Wilson, Ed Yarnall, and Geoff Goetz. Despite an excellent performance from Piazza, the Mets missed the 1998 postseason by one game. Piazza helped the Mets to two consecutive playoff appearances in 1999 and 2000. In the former season, Piazza tied his career highs of 40 home runs and 124 RBIs. He also set the record for most home runs in a season without ever hitting more than one in a game, passing a mark previously set by Rogers Hornsby in 1929.

The following year, Piazza led the Mets to an NL pennant and a World Series appearance in the 2000 Subway Series. He became known as the Monster after coach John Stearns was caught on tape during the 2000 National League Championship Series after a Piazza hit saying "The Monster is out of the Cage".

Piazza was involved in a bizarre incident during the 2000 World Series. Earlier in the season during interleague play, Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens hit Piazza in the head with a fastball. Piazza suffered a concussion and was forced to miss the 2000 MLB All-Star Game. Clemens was widely criticized by Mets fans for the incident, but Clemens maintained that the pitch was not intentional. Clemens and Piazza would go on to face each other again in the first inning of World Series Game 2. During the at-bat, Clemens threw a pitch that broke Piazza's bat as he fouled it off, sending the barrel and a sharp edge of the broken bat directly at Clemens on the mound just as he finished his delivery. Clemens caught the barrel and threw it across the first base line towards the Yankees' dugout and just past Piazza who was running down to first. Piazza gave a long stare at Clemens and slowly started walking towards Clemens to confront him, and Clemens asked the umpire for a new ball as if nothing had happened. During replays, Clemens can be seen shouting "I thought it was the ball!" and asking the umpire for a new ball multiple times as the two benches cleared and met at the mound. Words were exchanged between the two players, but no punches were thrown from either team and nobody was ejected. Piazza later caught for Clemens when both were on the NL team in the 2004 All-Star Game. Clemens gave up six runs in the first inning.

Piazza's game-winning 8th-inning home run in the first professional baseball game played in New York following the 9/11 attacks has been called iconic, therapeutic, and symbolic. The jersey he wore in that September 21, 2001 game was purchased in April 2016 for $365,000, the highest price ever paid for a modern-day jersey, and is displayed on a rotating basis among the 9/11 Memorial Museum, Citi Field, and the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

To ease the stress on his deteriorating knees, Piazza began to split his time between catching and playing first base during the 2004 season, an experiment which was abandoned before the end of the season because of Piazza's defensive deficiencies. Although recognized as a great hitter, Piazza has had some notable defensive accomplishments. Among them, Piazza caught two no-hitters thrown by Ramón Martínez and Hideo Nomo while playing with the Dodgers. Nomo's was particularly impressive because it happened at Coors Field, notorious for being a hitter-friendly ballpark. Additionally, Piazza's .997 fielding percentage was the highest among NL catchers in 2000.

On May 5, 2004, Piazza surpassed Carlton Fisk for most home runs by a catcher with his 352nd.

On October 2, 2005, Piazza played his final game in a Mets uniform. Because it was well-reported that Piazza would soon depart to free agency, Mets manager Willie Randolph elected to replace Piazza in the top of the eighth inning. With the Shea Stadium crowd giving him a standing ovation, Piazza humbly bowed to the stands and blew kisses to the adoring fans.

San Diego Padres
Following the 2005 season, Piazza signed a one-year contract with the San Diego Padres on January 29, 2006.

Serving as the Padres' starting catcher and clean-up hitter, Piazza experienced somewhat of a rejuvenation in 2006, batting .283 with 22 homers and helping the Padres to a division title. On July 21, 2006, Piazza collected his 2,000th career hit.

On August 8, 2006, Piazza played his first game at Shea Stadium since leaving the Mets. Throughout the three-game series, Piazza drew frequent standing ovations from New York fans. It was on par with that of Tom Seaver on his return to pitch at Shea Stadium in 1977 and 1978. Even more telling was during that series, on August 9, he drew a rare curtain call in the opposing park following a home run off Mets pitcher (and former Dodgers and Mets teammate) Pedro Martínez in the fourth inning. Not done for the day, Piazza went deep off Martinez again in the sixth. With the Mets ahead 4–2 in the eighth, and two runners aboard, Piazza hit one to the wall in center, nearly bashing his third homer of the day and putting the Padres ahead.

Oakland Athletics
Piazza signed as a free agent with the Oakland Athletics on December 8, 2006.

On July 25, 2007, in the top of the ninth inning in a game between the Angels and Athletics at Angel Stadium, a fan threw a water bottle that hit Piazza, who had homered earlier in the game. Piazza pointed his bat in the stands at the fan he believed threw the water bottle to get the attention of security. The fan, who was identified as Roland Flores from La Puente, California, was arrested by the ballpark security. Piazza pressed charges against Flores, and Flores was sentenced to 30 days in jail and three years of probation on March 27, 2008. On September 26, against the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, Piazza hit his 427th and what would be his final major league home run of his career, off of rookie pitcher Jon Lester.

After not being signed to any MLB team for the 2008 season, Piazza announced his retirement on May 20, 2008, saying, "After discussing my options with my wife, family and agent, I felt it is time to start a new chapter in my life. It has been an amazing journey."

Retirement
Piazza made a return to Shea Stadium during the "Shea Goodbye" closing ceremony on September 28, 2008, where he received the final pitch in the history of the stadium from Hall of Famer Tom Seaver. Piazza and Seaver also officially "closed" Shea when they walked off together into the center field exit and closed the door on the park after waving goodbye to the capacity crowd. On April 13, 2009, Piazza received the very first pitch in the new Citi Field from Seaver before the Mets' opening game against the Padres.

International baseball
Prior to the start of the 2006 MLB season, Piazza represented Italy in the 2006 World Baseball Classic.

Piazza was the Italian National Baseball team's hitting coach at the 2009 and 2013 World Baseball Classic. He was an instructor for the Italian Baseball Academy when it won back-to-back European Baseball Championships in 2010 and 2012.

On Nov. 13, 2019, Piazza announced that he would manage the Italian National Baseball team in the 2020 European Baseball Championship and the 2021 World Baseball Classic. Due to the coronavirus pandemic and cancellation of the 2020 European Baseball Club competitions, Piazza was unable to do so.

Reggiana
In 2016, Piazza purchased a majority ownership stake of the third-division Italian soccer club A.C. Reggiana in Reggio Emilia, with an estimated investment of $3 million. His interest grew from his friendship with former Italian soccer player Maurizio Franzone.

However, after two seasons of ownership and a controversial playoff loss to Robur Siena (with a penalty called in the 96th minute) Piazza put the team up for sale. Finding no buyers, and faced with mounting costs, including rent, the club ceased operations in July 2018. In December 2018 the team declared bankruptcy for the third time in twenty years. Piazza and his wife had feuded with Luca Vecchi, then mayor of Reggio Emilia, during their time as owners of the club.

Legacy

In a sixteen-year major league career, Piazza played in 1,912 games, accumulating 2,127 hits in 6,911 at bats for a .308 career batting average along with 427 home runs, 1,335 runs batted in, an on-base plus slugging percentage of .922 and an on-base percentage of .377. Piazza is one of the best-hitting catchers of all time, hitting 427 career home runs, 396 of them while he was playing the catcher position, a Major League Baseball record for career home runs by a catcher. Only eight other players have ever had over 400 home runs with over a .300 lifetime average while never striking out more than 100 times in a season (Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Lou Gehrig, Mel Ott, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Vladimir Guerrero and Chipper Jones). He is one of only three players in history to win ten Silver Slugger Awards, along with Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez.

In addition to his hitting, Piazza's defense has undergone a more positive reassessment in light of new defensive metrics. His pitch framing, in particular, ranks seventh-best among all catchers going back to the first data in 1988. Another report published in 2008 put him third among all catchers since 1948 in improving the performances of his pitchers.

Mets teammate Tom Glavine called Piazza a "first-ballot Hall of Famer, certainly the best hitting catcher of our era and arguably the best hitting catcher of all time". On May 8, 2010, while receiving an award, Piazza said to reporters that if he got into the Hall of Fame, he would like to be inducted as a Met, for whom he played seven-plus seasons.

Piazza managed the USA team in the 2011 futures game wearing a Mets cap to the event.

On January 9, 2013, Piazza failed to be elected to Baseball Hall of Fame, receiving only 57.8% of the votes and falling short of the 75% qualifying votes. He stated that he would address the performance-enhancing drugs and steroid rumors in his book Long Shot. In his second appearance on the ballot, Piazza's percentage numbers did rise (62.2%), but not to the 75% needed to be inducted. Piazza again failed to make the Hall of Fame in 2015, receiving 69.9% of the votes needed (28 votes shy of the mark). On January 6, 2016, Piazza was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, receiving 83% of the vote.

Piazza was inducted into the New York Mets Hall of Fame on September 29, 2013. The New York Mets retired his uniform number, 31, in a ceremony on July 30, 2016, prior to the Mets' game against the Colorado Rockies at Citi Field.

A triangular pennant bearing Piazza's surname and uniform number is in the background of character Peter Parker's bedroom in the 2019 film Spider-Man: Far From Home. The song 'Piazza, New York Catcher' by Scottish indie pop band Belle & Sebastian is about Piazza. Piazza's autobiography, entitled Long Shot, was released in February 2013.

Acting
Piazza has appeared in the movie Two Weeks Notice and has acted in various TV shows and commercials. During the 1994–95 MLB strike, Piazza and a handful of other striking players appeared as themselves in the November 27, 1994 episode of Married... with Children.

On May 3, 2013, Piazza debuted with the Miami City Ballet, saying a few lines in the role of a hit man in the troupe's production of Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. Piazza wants to increase the reputation of ballet among sports fans as a result of his daughters' attendance at a ballet school.

In 2023, Piazza appeared on the Fox reality challenge series Special Forces: World's Toughest Test.

Personal life
Piazza described Dodgers teammate Eric Karros as his "best friend in baseball."

On January 29, 2005, Piazza married Playboy Playmate Alicia Rickter at St. Jude's Catholic Church in Miami, Florida, before 120 guests, including Brande Roderick, Lisa Dergan, Anjelica Bridges, Al Leiter, John Franco, Iván Rodríguez, Eddie Trunk and Eric Karros.

On February 3, 2007, Piazza's wife gave birth to the couple's first child, daughter Nicoletta. On August 3, 2009, their second child, daughter Paulina, was born. The couple's third child and first son, Marco, was born in July 2013.

Piazza is known to be a fan of heavy metal music and is featured on the album Stronger than Death by Black Label Society. He is also godfather to Zakk Wylde's son, Hendrix. He often cohosts Eddie Trunk's Friday Night Rocks show on WAXQ ("Q-104.3 FM") in New York City and was featured as the primary guest on an episode of That Metal Show. He is also an accomplished drummer and has performed on stage with various bands.

Piazza is a devout Roman Catholic. His faith was instilled in him by his Catholic mother and was featured in Champions of Faith, a DVD documentary exploring the intersection of Catholic religious faith and sports. He also appeared in the follow-up video Champions of Faith: Bases of Life.

Piazza is also avidly involved in the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame in Chicago.

While playing with the Mets, Piazza was a resident of Cresskill, New Jersey. He also maintained a penthouse apartment on 18th Street in New York City.

title: Mike Piazza


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Sedimentology

Sedimentology encompasses the study of modern sediments such as sand, silt, and clay, and the processes that result in their formation (erosion and weathering), transport, deposition and diagenesis. Sedimentologists apply their understanding of modern processes to interpret geologic history through observations of sedimentary rocks and sedimentary structures.

Sedimentary rocks cover up to 75% of the Earth's surface, record much of the Earth's history, and harbor the fossil record. Sedimentology is closely linked to stratigraphy, the study of the physical and temporal relationships between rock layers or strata.

The premise that the processes affecting the earth today are the same as in the past is the basis for determining how sedimentary features in the rock record were formed. By comparing similar features today to features in the rock record—for example, by comparing modern sand dunes to dunes preserved in ancient aeolian sandstones—geologists reconstruct past environments.

Sedimentary rock types
There are four primary types of sedimentary rocks: clastics, carbonates, evaporites, and chemical.
 * Clastic rocks are composed of particles derived from the weathering and erosion of precursor rocks and consist primarily of fragmental material. Clastic rocks are classified according to their predominant grain size and their composition. In the past, the term "Clastic Sedimentary Rocks" were used to describe silica-rich clastic sedimentary rocks, however there have been cases of clastic carbonate rocks. The more appropriate term is siliciclastic sedimentary rocks.
 * Organic sedimentary rocks are important deposits formed from the accumulation of biological detritus, and form coal and oil shale deposits, and are typically found within basins of clastic sedimentary rocks
 * Carbonates are composed of various carbonate minerals (most often calcium carbonate (CaCO3)) precipitated by a variety of organic and inorganic processes. Typically, the majority of carbonate rocks are composed of reef material.
 * Evaporites are formed through the evaporation of water at the Earth's surface and most commonly include halite or gypsum.
 * Chemical sedimentary rocks, including some carbonates, are deposited by precipitation of minerals from aqueous solution. These include jaspilite and chert.

Importance of sedimentary rocks
Sedimentary rocks provide a multitude of products which modern and ancient society has come to utilise.
 * Art: marble, although a metamorphosed limestone, is an example of the use of sedimentary rocks in the pursuit of aesthetics and art
 * Architectural uses: stone derived from sedimentary rocks is used for dimension stone and in architecture, notably slate (metamorphosed shale) for roofing, sandstone for load-bearing buttresses
 * Ceramics and industrial materials: clay for pottery and ceramics including bricks; cement and lime derived from limestone.
 * Economic geology: sedimentary rocks host large deposits of SEDEX ore deposits of lead-zinc-silver, large deposits of copper, deposits of gold, tungsten, Uranium, and many other precious minerals, gemstones and industrial minerals including heavy mineral sands ore deposits
 * Energy: petroleum geology relies on the capacity of sedimentary rocks to generate deposits of petroleum oils. Coal and oil shale are found in sedimentary rocks. A large proportion of the world's uranium energy resources are hosted within sedimentary successions.
 * Groundwater: sedimentary rocks contain a large proportion of the Earth's groundwater aquifers. Our understanding of the extent of these aquifers and how much water can be withdrawn from them depends critically on our knowledge of the rocks that hold them (the reservoir).

Basic principles
The aim of sedimentology, studying sediments, is to derive information on the depositional conditions which acted to deposit the rock unit, and the relation of the individual rock units in a basin into a coherent understanding of the evolution of the sedimentary sequences and basins, and thus, the Earth's geological history as a whole.

The scientific basis of this is the principle of uniformitarianism, which states that the sediments within ancient sedimentary rocks were deposited in the same way as sediments which are being deposited at the Earth's surface today.

Sedimentological conditions are recorded within the sediments as they are laid down; the form of the sediments at present reflects the events of the past and all events which affect the sediments, from the source of the sedimentary material to the stresses enacted upon them after diagenesis are available for study.

The principle of superposition is critical to the interpretation of sedimentary sequences, and in older metamorphic terrains or fold and thrust belts where sediments are often intensely folded or deformed, recognising younging indicators or graded bedding is critical to interpretation of the sedimentary section and often the deformation and metamorphic structure of the region.

Folding in sediments is analysed with the principle of original horizontality, which states that sediments are deposited at their angle of repose which, for most types of sediment, is essentially horizontal. Thus, when the younging direction is known, the rocks can be "unfolded" and interpreted according to the contained sedimentary information.

The principle of lateral continuity states that layers of sediment initially extend laterally in all directions unless obstructed by a physical object or topography.

The principle of cross-cutting relationships states that whatever cuts across or intrudes into the layers of strata is younger than the layers of strata.

Methodology
The methods employed by sedimentologists to gather data and evidence on the nature and depositional conditions of sedimentary rocks include;
 * Measuring and describing the outcrop and distribution of the rock unit;
 * Describing the rock formation, a formal process of documenting thickness, lithology, outcrop, distribution, contact relationships to other formations
 * Mapping the distribution of the rock unit, or units
 * Descriptions of rock core (drilled and extracted from wells during hydrocarbon exploration)
 * Sequence stratigraphy
 * Describes the progression of rock units within a basin
 * Describing the lithology of the rock;
 * Petrology and petrography; particularly measurement of texture, grain size, grain shape (sphericity, rounding, etc.), sorting and composition of the sediment
 * Analysing the geochemistry of the rock
 * Isotope geochemistry, including use of radiometric dating, to determine the age of the rock, and its affinity to source regions

Recent developments
The longstanding understanding of how some mudstones form has been challenged by geologists at Indiana University (Bloomington) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The research, which appears in the December 14, 2007, edition of Science, counters the prevailing view of geologists that mud only settles when water is slow-moving or still, instead showing that "muds will accumulate even when currents move swiftly." The research shows that some mudstones may have formed in fast-moving waters: "Mudstones can be deposited under more energetic conditions than widely assumed, requiring a reappraisal of many geologic records."

Macquaker and Bohacs, in reviewing the research of Schieber et al., state that "these results call for critical reappraisal of all mudstones previously interpreted as having been continuously deposited under still waters. Such rocks are widely used to infer past climates, ocean conditions, and orbital variations."

Considerable recent research into mudstones has been driven by the recent effort to commercially produce hydrocarbons from them as unconventional reservoirs, in both the shale gas and tight oil (or Light Tight Oil) plays.

Recent research by an Australian sedimentologist, Dutkiewicz, has described how geocirculation is related to global temperatures and climate change. The research described carbon and water circulation, and impacts of heat on current and future capacity of carbon capture by the ocean.

title: Sedimentology