new parlance, new symbols,

Guantánamo, Evil and Zany in Pop Culture - New York Times -- Language changes constantly. It's dynamic and living. Here's a new one; the article fleshes it all out:

But Guantánamo is no longer just a naval station or even just a detention center. It is an idea in worldwide culture — in more than 20 books and half a dozen movies and plays, with more coming out every month.

It has become shorthand for hopeless imprisonment and sweltering isolation. “The strange new Alcatraz,” one writer calls it, “the gulag of our times.”