Professor John Robertson OBA

The Express today has:

Nicola Sturgeon was CIA agent who stoked gender wars to foil Scexit, claims top nationalist – Former diplomat Craig Murray suggests that American spooks used USAID funding to split the SNP, adding that the former First Minister was likely ‘bribed, indoctrinated and blackmailed’

https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/nicola-sturgeon-cia-agent-who-34647121

Mad, eh? Who would believe any of that?

I’m saying nothing….well nothing much but I have worried and written at times of a more subtle form of CIA presence – a form of cultural imperialism which manifests itself in ‘Atlanticism‘ – a tendency to admire US politics, especially the Democrats and to uncritically side with US foreign policy moves. It’s common among Glasgow University politics graduates, in my experience.

Let me be clear. I’m not so daft as to think someone like me would last a week in places like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, China or in any of their satellites states. A critical, lefty, social liberal like me and many of you, I’m sure, depends on the level of civil and human rights only found strongly embedded in North-west Europe, Oceania and, maybe, in parts of North America.

However, that doesn’t mean to say I have to agree with everything, especially the frankly wrong-headed military interventions in other countries deemed not to be serving Western interests. That’s why I was such an admirer of Alex Salmond when, back in 2003, he alone among big-party leaders stood against the launch of Iraq War 2 and even went so far as to call for Tony Blair to be tried as the war criminal he undoubtedly is.

Returning to Atlanticism, you can see it in the all-paid ‘cultural’ trips to the USA made by budding Labour politicians, Scottish MSM journalists, even a few SNP MPs including one now calling for an alliance with Labour and, of course, top Holyrood civil servants including one blamed by some for the demise of the very man who had decades before had the nerve to criticise the Blair Government and the security services for fabricating the case for war in 2003.

So, when in 2015, I read this in the admittedly leftist WSWS but based on what did actually happen, I was dismayed:

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s comments to the United States Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC, brook no misunderstanding. Asked in a question and answer session to elaborate on the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) views on the European Union (EU) and Scottish relations with the US, Sturgeon explained:

“We would consider ourselves to be a key ally of the United States. We want to work constructively within the world community to make sure we are playing our part and resolving some of the conflicts and some of the issues of challenge that we live with in the modern world. We would want to be a continuing member of the NATO Alliance to play our part in collective security.”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/23/stur-j23.html

Again, I’m not saying Scotland should stand against NATO but do we have to be a ‘key [US] ally?’ Did she even have to go at all? No doubt when the FM said it, she imagined her glass ceiling-busting hero [a complete monster hawk of course, but a woman Democrat so that’s OK?] Hilary Clinton, would be President.

So, returning to the Express piece, do we think the CIA used USAID money for gender seminars at Edinburgh University and MI5/6 did a bit of ‘persuasion’, to weaken the SNP and to confuse the Yes campaign more widely?

Sounds mad doesn’t it? Have MI5/6 and the CIA ever done things that had you suggested them, your best friend would suggest you were paranoid, losing it?

I mean, MI6 faking evidence on WMDs in Iraq, or spying on UN member nations before the vote on the Iraq War? They’d never do that would they? MI5 turning the top IRA killer and having to let him kill other MI5 assets to maintain his cover?

The CIA? You’ve seen the films, the documentaries – sending explosive cigars to Fidel Castro is one of the less mad ideas they’ve had. So, just how mad is the Express story. It’s only suggesting a bit private conversation and spending a few bucks.

I dunno what to think but I’m not happy.