Big Brother is approaching

Our wonderful U.S. government is once again pushing for a method of checking the backgrounds of all airline travelers and it is setting up a database to track all foreign students. In themselves they are probably OK however they are also stepping stones to further intrusions into our lives.

I guess George Orwell was only off 19 years when he wrote a book entitled "1984". I never read the book but did see a movie based on it so perhaps it is time that I actually read it. First, though, I will read Gore Vidal's "Dreaming War" (Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta) which I purchaed earlier this week.

I need some rest however or reading anything will put me to sleep. It has been so busy at work that I am fatigued when I get home and feel like dong nothing. Mornings are best for me for reading so I try to do a little before going to work plus on Sunday mornings when I have a lot of time.

Assassinate John Wayne? Really? Read on...

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LONDON (Reuters) - Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was so outraged at the anti-communism of film star John Wayne that he plotted to have him murdered, according to a new biography of the American icon.
"John Wayne -- The man behind the myth" by British writer and actor Michael Munn says there were several attempts in the late 1940s and early 1950s to kill the man known to audiences around the world as "Duke."

In the first attempt, two Russian assassins posing as FBI agents tried to kill Wayne -- born Marion Morrison on May 26, 1907 -- in his office at Warner Brothers studios in Hollywood.

But the plot was uncovered and the would-be killers captured, the book says, citing several sources including director Orson Welles.

The book says the Soviet plots were canceled after Stalin's death in 1953, by his successor Nikita Krushchev, who was a fan of the larger-than-life star of more than 100 films.

"That was a decision of Stalin during his last five mad years. When Stalin died I rescinded that order," the book quotes Krushchev as telling Wayne during a private meeting in 1958.

But it says American communist groups took up the cudgels against Wayne who was a supporter of the anti-communist witch-hunt led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, citing an attempt in Mexico on the set of the film "Hondo."

Wayne survived these attempts and another by a sniper during a trip to visit American troops in Vietnam in 1966. He eventually died of cancer in 1979.

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And with that bit of news I am outa here for now.