The following post-referendum poll from Lord Ashcroft does a good summary of who voted how and why. However, the most telling distinction is the following:

• Voters aged 16-17: YES: 71%; NO: 29%
• Voters aged 65+: YES: 27%; NO: 73%

How will last night's vote look like in 5, 10 or 15 years when today's 17 year olds are Scotland's prime demographic?

The world is in the midst of a global crackdown on Islamic State and its ideas. European, American and Australian mass arrests were carried out amid frightening intelligence reports, as the US continues efforts at building an anti-IS coalition.


The effort to clamp down on any affiliation to the terrorist group has reached as far as France, the US, Spain and other countries - even the partially-recognized Kosovo.

Six potential recruits have been arrested in France, a judicial source said on Wednesday, with the number of French nationals traveling to sections of Syria and Iraq partly-controlled by the IS (formerly ISIS or ISIL) continuing to rise.


Two of the detained on Tuesday are minors, while another pair is a brother and sister; one other suspect is believed to be linked to Forsane Alizza (Knight of Pride), an organization calling for France to become an Islamic caliphate. It was banned in 2012.

The CIA's European Division has halted its operations in Europe in response to several spying scandals in Germany and the continent's negative reaction to the revelations of spying by the National Security Agency on European leaders and citizens.

The stand-down order has been in effect for two months. It was designed to give CIA officers time to examine whether they were being careful enough and to evaluate whether spying on allies is worth running the risk of discovery, a US official who has been briefed on the situation told the Associated Press.

Case officers in Europe have largely forbidden from undertaking "unilateral operations" such as meeting with sources they have recruited within allied governments. The continent's countries have long been used as safe venues to conduct meetings between CIA officers and sources from the Middle East and other high priority areas; those encounters have been rerouted to other locales.

The spying stand-down comes at an inopportune time, AP reported, citing worries over Western extremists heading to Syria and Iraq to join with the Islamic State, as well as the standoff with Russia over influence on Ukraine and the independence movement in the eastern part of the country. Tensions have grown between the US and its European allies since Edward Snowden's NSA revelations in June 2013.

It is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of the divine plan. Russia's cunning plan in Ukraine belongs to the same category. In analyzing the statements made by Sergei Lavrov in his interview with Russia Beyond the Headlines on September 17, 2014, some commentators have added a third concept - that of diplomatic theatre - to this duality. While it is generally bad form to overanalyze religious beliefs, let us apply some simple mathematics to understand the play behind the curtains of diplomatic theatre.

The concept of diplomatic theatre is understood differently by commentators. Many of the definitions are clearly wrong. Diplomatic theatre is not magic, mysticism, or sleight of hand. The language of diplomacy is far more akin to mathematics than commonly understood. As in mathematics, every word has its place, and no phrase is spoken out of context or frivolously.

The product of a diplomatic equation is directly dependent on the placement of definitions in a string of calculated statements. Like legal language, diplomatic language can be deciphered, broken down into components, and analyzed with precision. To a keen observer, there is nothing mysterious in what diplomats say. Bad diplomacy, on the other hand, is the opposite of this approach. And Lavrov is an excellent diplomat. Accordingly, let us parse out the meaning of Lavrov's interview without resorting to magic or belief in the guiding hand that can do no wrong.

Setting Out the Equation

Lavrov's interview contains a wealth of statements with respect to the crisis in Ukraine. Many of them have been made before - Russia's steadfast commitment to investigating the Odessa massacre, the crash of the Malaysian Airlines Boeing MH17, and the war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by the Ukrainian troops in Donbass. All of these remarks are laudable, praiseworthy and notable in and of themselves.

However, the immediate, short and medium term future of Novorossiya no longer depends on what happened in Odessa, Mariupol and Slavyansk. Far more important to the existence of the Donetsk and the Lugansk People's Republics (respectively, "DRP" and "LPR") is the document executed following consultations in Minsk on September 5, 2014 - the Protocol of the Trilateral Contact Group, more commonly known as the Minsk Protocol. Perhaps even more important to the continued existence of the DPR and the LPR is Russia's commitment to the Minsk Protocol, which Russia signed along with the other participants, and the forms such commitment takes.

Is it morning in America again, or is the bubble that is the American economy about to pop (again), this time perhaps tipping it into full-blown collapse in five stages with symphonic accompaniment and fireworks?

A country blowing itself up is quite a sight to behold, and it makes us wonder about lots of things. For instance, it makes us wonder whether the people who are doing the blowing up happen to be criminals. (Sure, they may be in a manner of speaking - as a moral judgment passed on the powerful by the powerless - but since none of them are likely to see the inside of a jail cell or even a courtroom any time soon, the point is moot. Let's be sure to hunt them down once they try to run and hide, though.) But at a much more basic and fundamental level, a better question to ask is this one:

"Why are we being so fucking stupid?"

What do I mean when I use the term "fucking stupid"? I do not mean it as a term of abuse but as a precise, if unflattering, diagnosis. Here is as good a definition as any, excerpted from American Eulogy by Jim Quinn:

If you had told someone on September 10, 2001 that ten years later America would be running $1.5 trillion annual deficits, fighting two wars of choice in countries that despise our presence, and had not only not addressed the $100 [trillion] of unfunded welfare liabilities but added billions more with Medicare D and Obamacare, they would have thought you were a crazy doomster predicting the end of the world. They would have put you away in a padded cell if you had further predicted that politicians would cut taxes three separate times, that the Wall Street banks that leveraged themselves 40 to 1 and destroyed the financial system [would be] handed $2 trillion of taxpayer funds so they could pay themselves multi-million dollar bonuses, and that the Federal Reserve would triple its balance sheet to $2.45 trillion by running its printing presses at hyper-speed and handing the money to those same Wall Street Mega-Banks.

Where does Scotland's wealth go (if it doesn't stay here)?

It's a simple question but not one often asked, probably as most economics bloggers like myself get bogged down in numbers and over-complicate the issue.

Data from the UK Government's Office for National Statistics demonstrates in simple terms the distribution of personal wealth in the UK. It is clear to see that London and the south are by far the wealthiest parts of the UK. Not just the south east but the South West as well.
Clearly the further north you go the lower the distribution of wealthy households and this matches other research that shows overall lower average household wealth, and lower the average household income in the north.

The map of wealthy household distribution shows a clear north/south wealth divide within England itself, which many of us knew about, but many will be surprised at just how far south the divide sits. Without over complicating the issue this data when taken with all other wealth and income statistics that look at wealth/income distribution within the UK confirms that wealth is centralised around London. The more northern areas of the UK have suffered years of de-industrialisation, high unemployment and lower investment that followed the emergence of London-centric finance and service-led economic policy under consecutive Conservative and New Labour governments.

No surprises there then! However, when you compare the map of where the wealth ends up with a map of where the UK's wealth is generated, they don't tell the same story. The union drains wealth from Scotland.

© Murdo MacleodAlex Salmond concedes defeat last night at the Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh.

Leader of the Scottish National party says he will stand down in November when a new leader of the party will be chosen

Alex Salmond has said he will stand down as Scotland's first minister and Scottish National party leader after failing to secure a majority for independence in Thursday's referendum.

He told a press conference in his official residence of Bute House that he would stand down as first minister in November when a new SNP leader will be chosen.

Salmond said: "For me right now there is a decision as to who is best placed to lead this process forward politically.

"I believe that in this new exciting situation, redolent with possibility, party, parliament and country would benefit from new leadership".

He said that he would not accept the SNP's nomination to be a candidate for leader at the party's annual conference in Perth in November, allowing a new party leader to be elected.

Given the SNP's majority in the Scottish parliament, the new leader will also become first minister.

The SNP deputy leader, Nicola Sturgeon, is widely seen as the most likely successor to the long-serving Salmond.

Salmond added that the most important thing to the independence cause was not about who was first minister of Scotland

Russia has said the conduct of the Scottish referendum "did not meet international standards", with its observers complaining the count took place in rooms that were too big and that the procedure was badly flawed.

In an apparent attempt to mirror persistent western criticism of Russia's own elections, Igor Borisov - an accredited observer - said the poll failed to meet basic international norms.

Borisov and three other Russians arrived in Edinburgh on Wednesday evening, the state news agency Ria Novosti reported. The team from Moscow's Public Institute of Suffrage watched voting take place in the Scottish capital and the surrounding area. It also met with Scottish politicians, voters and representatives from non-governmental organisations, Ria said.

Borisov said he was unimpressed by what he saw. He said the room where he watched the count on Thursday night was a cavernous "aircraft hangar" next to an airfield. It was difficult to see what was going on, he said, adding: "The hangar is approximately 100m by 300m. There are tables, with voting papers stacked upon them, but the observers are stuck around the perimeter. Even if you want to, it's impossible to tell what's happening. It's also unclear where the boxes with ballot papers come from."

As Scotland's independence vote draws near, concerns are growing over possible vote rigging in the absence of international observers, which may cause the vote to play into the hands of the British government.

Informed sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, have told Press TV that absence of international observers to monitor the independence referendum and close competition between pro- and anti-independence camps are the main reasons that have strengthened suspicion of vote-rigging attempts.

Meanwhile, various British political leaders have been launching what has been described by Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond as a "scaremongering" campaign, in an effort to make Scots wary of the possible fallout of a 'Yes' to independence.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is deeply skeptical about the Obama administration's new strategy to confront the ISIL terrorist organization in Syria, according to a report.

CIA officials have expressed "outright opposition" to the White House's proposal to task the Pentagon to further train and arm the so-called moderate militant groups in Syria to push back ISIL terrorists, The Huffington Post reports.

The CIA has already been covertly training Syrian insurgents out of secret bases in Jordan to fight the government of President Bashar al-Assad.


The spy agency, however, has come to find the militants increasingly "disorganized" and "radicalized," the report said.

"The CIA thinks that it is impossible to train and equip a force of pro-Western Syrian nationals that can fight and defeat Assad, al-Nusra and ISIL, regardless of whatever air support that force may receive," a Democratic member of Congress told the online newspaper.

The congressman added that the CIA believes the new strategy is "doomed to failure."

He said that the CIA already believes its previous assignment to train and arm the Syrian militants was a "fool's errand." "And they are well aware of the fact that many of the arms that they provided ended up in the wrong hands."