Word: prisoners
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...more interesting. A relentlessly intelligent, funny, and kind writer, he's endlessly interested in stupid, humorless, cruel people, and in his new book House of Meetings (Knopf; 256 pages) he turns for a fresh supply of them to Stalin-era Russia. Ranging back and forth from frozen Arctic prison camps to the unseemly capitalist free-for-all of the post-Soviet era, House of Meetings is two love stories - one of romantic love, and one of the love between brothers - that are woven together, then crushed and deformed by the state-sponsored terror of the mid-century Soviet regime...
...Detention House, where I was to remain for 6 1/2 years, was the foremost detention house for political prisoners in Shanghai. It was an old establishment where the Kuomintang had once imprisoned Communists. The black Jeep drove through the main gate, along a drive lined by willow trees, then through another gate. I was undressed, searched, photographed, fingerprinted. ''While you are here, you will be known by a number,'' the man at the entry desk said. ''You'll no longer use your name, not even to the guards. Your number is 1806.'' I was taken out through another gate...
...state of semiconsciousness, with fantastic dreams of myself floating in and out of the cell through the iron-barred window as if I were an ethereal spirit. One morning the young man came back and said, ''You don't have hepatitis. It's probably TB. A lot of prisoners have TB. You may go to the hospital to have a fluoroscope.'' The waiting room of the prison hospital could only be described as a scene of hell, full of emaciated human beings in tattered clothes, with pain and agony clearly written on their wasted faces, waiting patiently...
...court-martial hearings and rulings have limited the scope of Watada's available arguments to the point that he and his lawyer now concede they have no ability to stick to their original strategy of putting the war on trial, and little hope of keeping Watada from a prison sentence. "Unfortunately, in the military system, when it comes down to war, the policies of war are dictated by the Administration," Watada said in an interview with TIME. His lawyer, Eric Seitz, is less circumspect. "Military courts don't constitute a justice system," Seitz says. "They constitute a disciplinary system...
...saying such arguments involve a political question that is beyond the purview of the military court. The judge also ruled that the First Amendment does not protect Watada from punishment for making antiwar statements that the military claims amount to misconduct. Watada now faces up to four years in prison (down from six years, after two of the six charges against him were dropped in January in pre-court-martial maneuvering). His court-martial is likely to be concluded by Wednesday, with a verdict by the end of the week...