As for you suggesting that Giuffre is cynically after more cash and that this is a 'hard truth', no, it is a improbably cycnical portrayal of the matter. He settled out of court because he's only ever been able to offer very spurious defences to the allegations against him. You apparently see him as an innocent or as good as in this matter, and terribly unfortunate to be hounded by a shameless gold digger a second time. That opinion is a very long way from being a fact, almost as far as some of the conspiracy theories you have derided.
That's naive, I'm afraid. Andrew is stupid, which is well-known, and he is his own worst defense. He may be guilty of not thinking through how he's handed a teen for sex by his rich friend, but it's very obvious why the woman hounded him, he is an easy, rich target. Why didn't she hound anyone else if she was an unwilling sex slave and why now? The settlement payoff puts it in perspective.
Speaking of which, what's your due diligence procedure for having sex with a legal teen that lives with your rich friend and is in awe of your fame like many other girls? Do you hand her over a questionnaire that tries to determine if there is any coercion? Do you ask her if she's feeling safe with you and when she smiles and says yes, you bring in a psychologist to talk to her while you are pulling your pants down?
This was Andrew's plausible defense and it's the same for any other bigwig that slept with Epstein's girls. They can say they didn't know there's a coercion and if there's no further evidence, they walk out of the court. Which is probably why they are not prosecuted in the first place.
You're acting like that is a crazy thing for people to think. A pedophile with connections to lots of famous and rich people dies suspiciously in jail. Most people heard this and thought something fishy was going on, including the very mainstream news sources you seem to think have a monopoly on information. This is barely different to when Khashoggi was killed and everyone assumed the Saudis did it, or when Sergei Skripal was poisoned in the UK and everyone assumed it was Putin. I'm pretty sure you think you know who did the other two, so why you're so irrationally hostile to the idea that Epstein was assassinated is really weird and inconsistent. It comes across like you're just blindly adopting the opposite position to "conspiracy theorists", regardless of whether or not it actually makes sense to be that certain.
Well, if a lot of stupid people are saying one thing, like "Epstein didn't kill himself", it does begin to look suspicious. And if you look at the his case, it is. I'll just leave all the "suspicious" circumstances out because one simple look at the motivation and an Occam's razor is enough to realize he killed himself. He was a disgraced super-VIP about to be tried publicly for his sex shenanigans. He already tried to kill himself once in prison. Therefore, he succeeded the second time. That's it, he had all the motivation to do it on his own and a history that proves it.
So why bring in a conspiracy? As always put yourself in a conspirator shoes. You are organizing an assassination in prison of a very famous person and even if it works, the cops will be all over it because of huge public pressure. How many people you need to pay off to look the other way? And what if one talks anyway? What if Epstein had a little black book with some lawyer that is supposed to publish it if he ends up dead?
Why would you risk all your affluent life for a risky hit that may not even silence a witness? Is hiding having probably legal sex with teens worth it?
That's enough logic for me. One problem with conspiracy theorists is that they never do this kind of risk-benefit analysis from the viewpoint of the alleged conspirators. They prefer the elite pedo rings narrative and stop there, not thinking through the important part, the motivation.
Barely 20 years ago, the idea that the Iraqi WMDs didn't exist was considered a fringe conspiracy theory in the press and hardly anyone in the American or British establishment even entertained it. Similarly the Prison-Industrial Complex was something everyone in black neighbourhoods knew about the moment it was established in the 70s, but it took decades for it to be talked about openly. Even recently, there was the idea that the anti-semitism allegations levelled against the labour party were faked and organised by wreckers within the party. This was a fringe conspiracy theory for all of 6 months before actual hard evidence came out confirming it.
Iirs, the WMD issue was brought quickly to public attention after the Iraq occupation and the press began to ask questions. It's true that few people questioned it, having implicit trust in US intel. The Bush puppetmasters were pretty brazen about forming the news narrative.
However, all you could hear from conspiracy theorists (and hard leftists) at the time, that the US is going for the oil and making up all kinds of pretexts. I don't remember anyone claiming there were no WMDs (maybe Germany and France?) and that's why I wouldn't say there was a coherent conspiracy theory based on at least some evidence, just general anti-imperialist clamor.
My point here again is the big difference between very simplistic conspiracy theories driven by narrative and the actual truth, which was actually out there in the open for people who read about what neocons were publishing before they came to power with Bush.
Which is why conspiracy theories are taken up by ignorant and gullible people who fixate on certain narratives because of their psychological needs.
I get that most conspiracy theorists are stupid and annoying, but dogmatically denying absolutely everything they say out of principle is childish and ideologically equivalent to believing the earth is flat. Sometimes they happen to be correct, and by pushing against that you end up saying heinous stuff like "coerced sex between a literal monarch and a 16 year old girl isn't a crime"
I've been through many a debate with antivaxxers and there was a new false claim daily, the fact checkers couldn't keep up. The sheer amount of false conspiracy theories that are all proved wrong, but people don't stop believing them, is what made me come to a general conclusion about conspiracy theories.
About the coerced sex, see above. It's hard to recognize it as coerced if any number of women would sleep with you anyway because you are a Prince and the girl is not kept in a sex dungeon and crying, but going out with you dancing.
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