Michael Yon is actually there. Full of good stuff, interesting detail that you’d never get from stale, always-read-the-same mainstream media.

Cringley apparently has the inside scoop on how News Corp almost closed a deal last week to buy Skype for $3 billion. That number is not a misprint!

He speculates at the end that the acquisition was never serious, but to still have stirred up the market value to this amount is amazing.

If the story is true, here’s two possibilities:

1– Murdoch didn’t want to buy Skype, but knowing that some of his media/cable/telco/internet competitors are interested, is more than happy to step in and drive up the price to make it painfully expensive for whoever does buy them. Kind of like Vodafone sitting there bidding for AT&T against Cingular– one suspects that Vodafone’s participation was only to make Cingular overpay, which would effectively help Verizon (which Vodafone owns 45%).

2– Murdoch is trying to establish himself as a leading indicator of bubble behaviour. It was, after all, this same man that tried to buy PointCast for $400 million in the Web1.0 bubble days. We all remember how it was finally sold for a few million just a couple years later. Offering $3 billion for Skype could be seen as the encore to paying almost $580 million for MySpace.

It would be kind of interesting if Skype were bought for some insane amount. The inflationary impact on the Estonian economy would be pretty high, I imagine!

Chrenkoff’s great post on Poland and Belarus. The title is brilliant: Domino Theory Revisited. Who would have predicted 50, 30, or even 15 years ago that a “reverse domino theory” could be possible.

They are two developed, modern western countries still arguing today over ownership of a tiny rock island. No, not Spain and the UK over Gibraltar, but Canada and Denmark over Han Island!

Don’t feel bad, I had no idea this dispute existed, either, until I heard they were using google ads as a new theatre of combat! Check it out.

I was forwarded an email newsletter by a friend some time ago written by a chap called Tony who happens to be life coach.

His newsletter is generally interesting, easy to digest, and doesn’t come too frequently to feel like it becomes a chore to read.

I recommend you try it. Send an email to tonys.coachingtip at btinternet.com, with “subscribe” in the subject header.

Shame he doesn’t have a blog, though.

Inspired by the guy killed in London, an interesting review of the boom in Brazilian emigration:

• “ The number of Brazilians captured on the U.S.-Mexico border — 27,000 from October to July, nearly triple the previous year — illustrates the trend. Brazil’s government estimates half the 1.5 million Brazilians in the United States are there illegally.”
• “Ground zero for smugglers is Governador Valadares, a city of 250,000 just 50 miles from Gonzaga, where federal police issue the passports allowing immigrants to enter Mexico, which lifted a visa requirement for Brazilians in 2002.”
• “Governador Valadares Mayor Jose Mourao estimates 40,000 residents from his city alone have lived abroad. Ninety percent return, he said, and entire neighborhoods have sprung up from foreign currency.”

I’m amazed at the percentage of people who return.

From Scoble, this is a great conversation. Pre-blogs, pre-conversation, this sort of story would have festered as rumor and conspiracy.

Either way you look at it, the outcome is positive. The bloggers help keep MS honest, but also help MS communicate back to the world about what they’re up to. Let’s continue to see more openness like this.

Salient passage:

If this article is accurately written, makes me angry to see things being handled so sloppily when so many are risking their lives for Iraq to work.