'Who is Watching the Watchers?'
A Taste of Big Brother in U.S.
by Jim Wurst

AT THE Ministry of Truth, government clerk Winston Smith labored to rewrite speeches and rewrite history, with the singular knowledge burned into his brain: "Big Brother Is Watching You."
Big Brother was the ever-present video eye, the Hitlerian leader watching over the citizens of Oceania. This was Winston's world, a place constantly at war with shifting enemies, its passive populace accepting that the "enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil."
In the course of George Orwell's novel, 1984, about a completely monitored state of Thought Police, Newspeak and Hate Week, poor Winston is betrayed and crushed, at last casting aside the last vestiges of his soul to realize that he, too, loves Big Brother.
The fictional Oceania in 1984 isn't the United States in 2001.
And yet, privacy advocates say, in the aftermath of the worst attack on American soil since the founding of the republic in 1776, in a climate of grief and fear, America is, indeed, moving closer to Orwell's terrible vision.
Orwellian words ring out in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
Homeland Defense: Tomorrow afternoon, in the Oval Office, U.S. President George W. Bush swears in Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania as homeland defense secretary, with cabinet rank and sweeping powers to fight terrorism on American soil as he sees fit, with troops and warplanes and the

Following attacks, courtrooms become secret, documents sealed

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Illness forces Kaneland to close Almost 20 percent of Kaneland High School's 830 students became ill Wednesday and Thursday, causing school to be canceled today.
The cause of the illnesses is unknown, but the Kane County Health Department performed tests for bacteria Thursday on the school's classrooms, water and air.
The health department also will interview both sick and healthy students to determine the source of the illness.
Sick students displayed flu-like symptoms including headaches, dizziness, nausea and diarrhea.
Kane County Regional Superintendent Clem Mejia supported the decision to close the school today.
"Unlike other situations where you know what the problems are, this is at this point a precautionary measure," he said. "At this point they are trying to eliminate any possibilities of what it might be."
Mejia said he expects results from the health department tests to be available within 24 hours.
Tom Runty, assistant superintendent for the Kaneland school district, said the sickness seems more like a virus than food poisoning, which originally was considered to be the cause.
The health department is inspecting the cafeteria, though no pattern has formed that would indicate the illness is caused by food or water contamination.