Oriana Fallaci has died

[Chaos]

So it's not libel to say "John Smith is a thief" unless you absolutely know he isn't one? Well, you weren't with him every waking hour, so maybe he did swipe something when you weren't looking.

If that's the criterion, nothing is libel.

But as far as you know, Mr Smith didn´t do anything right? The available evidence - such as a lack of thefts at moments when you´re not looking at him - points towards him not being a thief. There is no reason for you to assume that he is a thief, and every reason to assume that he isn´t.

If, on the other hand, there´s been a series of thefts in the neighbourhood, all of which happened at times when you weren´t looking at Mr Smith, and he´s quite a bit more affluent than usual lately, that would be a different story.

But that´s not quite the point... to reach a similar degree of certainty that the claims are false as in Holocaust Denial, your Mr Smith would have to be paralyzed with only minimal control of one finger and both eyes left, the thefts would have needed a degree of sleight-of-hand skills to put a first-rate magician to shame, and Mr Smith would have had to have been in a different country while the thefts happened. *That* is the absolutely knowing it is false we´re talking about with Holocaust Denial.