St. Augustine: “Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms? A gang is a group of men under command of a leader, bound by a compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention… For it was a witty and a truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to Alexander the Great. The king asked the fellow, ‘What is your idea, in infesting the sea?’ And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, ‘The same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because I do it with a tiny craft, I'm called a pirate: because you have a mighty navy, you're called an emperor.’” (City of God, Book IV, Chapter 4)

Colonel Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to the U.S. Secretary of State, explains how they [the White House] bought European leaders and "taught the dogs to bark".

• "We bought newspaper editors"
• "We bought union heads"
• "We bought parliamentarians"
• "We bought two secretaries general: Jens Stoltenberg and Mark Rutte"
• "We bought whole countries in terms of their political apparatus and what influences them"

https://x.com/Glenn_Diesen/status/2094362490306015332/video/1