Noam Chomsky. Deterring democracy (1992).

To overcome the threat posed by Vietnamese nationalism, it was necessary to destroy the virus and inoculate the region against the disease. This result was achieved. Indochina was successfully destroyed, while the US supported killers, torturers, and tyrants in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and South Korea, providing the crucial support when needed for slaughter on a massive scale.

Salim Yaqub · Containing Arab Nationalism (2005)

The Eisenhower administration, too, would worry about the proliferation of Nasserist ideology, especially its neutralist element. U.S. officials feared that Arab neutralism could ultimately result in a Soviet takeover of the Middle East or, failing that, in the denial to the West of the region’s strategic positions and oil reserves. It was in five Arab nations lying to Egypt’s east—Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Lebanon—that Nasserist influence would arouse the most vigorous and sustained controversy with the United States. Each of those nations would figure prominently in one or more of the political crises associated with the Eisenhower Doctrine.

Are these two quotes saying similar things?

I think that Vietnam was ringed by dictatorships to react to contagion. (Though Chomsky believes that it was an inoculation, not a reaction.)

Could we say something similar for Egypt?

Excerpts from here:

"the U.S. intelligence community has shown no letup in its fight to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. Armed with information that the U.S. provides, Ukraine’s military has launched strikes deep inside Russia. And U.S. spy satellites provide early warning about incoming missiles and drones. Among U.S. personnel on the ground, “the CIA is in the lead,” a retired senior officer who travels frequently to Ukraine told me. If anything, the Ukrainians, with the CIA’s help, have gotten too good at hurting Russia for Trump’s taste."

[...]

"One intelligence officer in the Baltics, who works closely with the Americans to counter Russian influence, told me that, though you’d never know it from Trump’s rhetoric, the CIA’s operations are now “much more aggressive” than they were during the Biden administration."

[...]

"The CIA helped build the modern Ukrainian intelligence apparatus after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Partly owing to that long history, officials in Kyiv said they trust Ratcliffe to tell Trump the truth about the war"

[...]

"the CIA, with Ratcliffe in charge, has reclaimed its traditional role at the center of the intelligence community. On paper, the president’s chief intelligence adviser is the director of national intelligence. In practice, it’s Ratcliffe."

[...]

"No one knows the state of the war, and the stakes involved, better than the CIA officers who are working in Ukraine and monitoring the fight from headquarters."

[...]

"Although the CIA doesn’t disclose personnel figures, current and former officers told me they have never seen such a large number of retirements and resignations in their career. Some have even left on the verge of a major promotion. Vacancies in senior posts might have to be filled by less experienced officers. When CIA officers quit, their colleagues gather in the lobby of the headquarters building for a “clap out,” a round of applause to wish them well on their last day. Ratcliffe isn’t a fan of the tradition, two former employees told me. They serve as a reminder that many people have left."

[...]

"This is not to say that everyone is unhappy at Langley. Broadly speaking, current and former officers told me, morale is highest in the operations directorate, among the officers who conduct the espionage that Ratcliffe wants to emphasize. Personnel in the Special Activities Center, which conducts covert and paramilitary activities, are particularly satisfied, recently retired officers told me, perhaps because they’re so busy, and not only in Ukraine."

[...]

"CIA operations in Mexico and El Salvador as part of the Trump administration’s clandestine efforts to combat drug cartels. In August, The Washington Post reported that a series of air strikes targeting Ecuadorian fishing boats near the Galápagos Islands, a known hub for drug traffickers, were part of a covert CIA program. Legal experts have said that U.S. air strikes against boats suspected of carrying illegal drugs may violate the laws of armed conflict and in some cases could be considered murder. Recently retired officers told me that some of their colleagues have avoided taking jobs in the CIA’s Americas and Counternarcotics Mission Center. “There are people at the operational level who, when the Democrats take over the House, will be left holding the bag,” one former officer told me. “The agency is over its skis right now.”"

[...]

"The CIA director seemed to be counseling Zelensky over the airwaves, a technique Trump’s own advisers have employed. The message came down to this: Remember who you’re dealing with, and things might work out. Ratcliffe might not advocate to his boss, but he knows how to read him."

The CIA also published the guide on their official Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/p/De23t17janF/

https://thespectaclemag.substack.com/p/the-french-people-are-burning-the

the French have once again realised that asking nicely doesn't work.

Science is both an idealized method of inquiry and a fallible institutional process. Hence, we should trust an expert consensus based on the scientific method, but also should examine critically the extent to which there genuinely is such a consensus (or conversely an alleged dissensus), especially when civil liberties are infringed on scientific grounds. The more extreme the infringement, the more robust must be the scientific consensus supporting it, particularly on issues of health and safety.

We also therefore need to be aware that vested interests might distort or misrepresent the level of scientific consensus (in either direction) through means such as:

• Regulatory capture: When industries manipulate their regulators.
• Media monopolization: When a few corporations own all the major media.
• Astroturfing: When fake grassroots campaigns hide corporate agendas.
• Funding bias: When companies finance studies favorable to their profit motive.
• Gatekeeping: When qualified dissenters are marginalized ("No true expert").

If a significant minority of qualified experts opposes a public policy as being too harmful or risky, a favorable majority opinion might still justify implementation of the policy on a trial basis, but not to the point of seriously infringing civil liberties, such as by imposing on individuals an involuntary acceptance of substantial harm/risk. Even if the majority view claims that failure to implement the policy would itself be too harmful or risky, nonexperts should not (be expected to) have greater confidence in this or either opinion than do qualified experts who reject the view in good faith. Just as nonexperts are quite rightly considered incompetent to refute an expert consensus, they are likewise incompetent to adjudicate a scientific controversy, and in such circumstances should have the freedom, individually or democratically, to choose a precautionary or minimax approach, on the reasonable (but rebuttable) presumption that each side has a non-negligible possibility of being right.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/precautionary-principle

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/minimax

Gaza and the Failure of International Justice | Norman Finkelstein’s Revelations