Who · am · I · to · refuse · the · universe?

Proof of truth is a full defence to a civil defamation claim. The reason for this is fairly obvious: one should not be able to protect a reputation one does not deserve. Absurdly, those charged with criminal defamation must not only prove the truth of their statements, but also that publication was for the public benefit.

The law isn't used much, and doesn't get much attention. But according to Richard Ingrams, himself once charged with criminal defamation, it is "quite frequently used to prosecute people who wrote defamatory letters to the police, though such cases seldom received any publicity."
Besides, rarely-used bad laws are in some respects worse than always-used bad laws, in that they give the authorities more powers to attack people they don't like.

Now Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP, is trying to abolish the law, via an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill which will be voted on on Monday. Given the minimal coverage (just Ingrams and a letter in The Times), and the fct that it's being pushed by a single backbencher, I wouldn't have held much hope for it getting anywhere. Except, Evan Harris was instrumental in getting rid of Blasphemous Libel last year.

Unfortunately, I can't think of much I can do to support Harris' amendment, given that the vote is on Monday and I live in the wrong country. Hence, writing about it here, in the vague hope that one of you will know more about me than the law (not a high bar), or have some idea what to do about it.

Somewhere, there must exist a company that will accept documents by email, print them, and post me the results. But I've not been able to find any. The print shops I can find are geared either towards making glossy full-colour brochures, or to printing lots of copies of the same document.

Does this kind of print-and-post service exist? Where?

January: I honestly don't think anything excited me in January; as far as I can tell, I spent the entire month moping around feeling sorry for myself.
February: Crusties. Ginsberg. Jared Diamond. Penny Red
March: Art. China: Wang Hui and other writers, and hours spent reading Chinese websites with google translate and a character dictionary. Jorn Barger, uncomfortably.
April: Edith Sitwell. The soul of man under Socialism. An intense and inexplicable obsession with bananas in art.
May: Naomi Klein. Naomi Wolf. Virginia Woolf. Cosma Shalizi (well, I'm always obsessed by Cosma. But this month in particular).
June: Tax havens. Economic history. Art history.
July: Marionnettes. Neukölln. Erik Davis.
August: Manga. Work-spaces.
September: electronic music. Mental health. Grant Morrison (again; always)
October: Situationism. Chinese foreign policy. Berlin.
November: Couchsurfing
December: Cooking. German grammar. Who knows what else - there's almost a week left.

Still, they managed to thoroughly botch the launch: bits not working, nothing to help their old readers adjust to LJ, and - most impressively - a near-total absence of new content today. It's hardly inspiring when only a couple of the journos can cough up a post for that first day - when, for once, somebody might be reading.

Presumably, it'll improve over time. Meanwhile, has anybody found anything genuinely interesting on the Independent blogs?

Has Ellis done anything as good as Transmetropolitan? Or, while I'm at it, are there other comics so blisteringly fantastic that I should dump Ellis and go read them instead?

Also, guys: witch-hunts are bad, mmkay?

Not-quite-relatedly, palmer1984, < lj user="aldabra"> and others, have long been muttering about how nobody on the left has anything constructive to say about the economic crisis. I mostly agree - but perhaps the folks who've spent every mayday shouting about Precarity might have been barking up exactly the right tree, after all.

Meanwhile, I'm planning to spend the evening translating an article about things being untranslatable. With luck, the paradox will lead to a moment of zen enlightenment, rather than just hours of head-scratching and dictionary-flipping.

Also, and unrelatedly, I'm increasingly impressed by these translations and reviews of the European press.

I'd be fascinated by what people make of it; not just emmav and the rest of the manga fans, but also the larger crowd who love Transmetropolitan &c. Because a good chunk of the argument is precisely what Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, and Alan Moore have spent decades grumbling about, and fighting against: the fact that a lot of Western superhero comics are really, really bad - slow-paced, unimaginative, unable to imagine readers who aren't boys or nostalgic men. And I'm not convinced that's true any more: manga may be more inventive than mainstream comics, but is it really more inventive than all the fringe stuff that's popped up since the 80s?