Word: excremention
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...wrists of one prisoner were tightened so much that blood came through the pores. Hands and feet often swelled to unimaginable proportions and turned black. Jaws, noses, ribs, teeth and limbs, the prisoners charged, were deliberately broken and left unset. The sick and wounded were left in their own excrement for days on end. Fan belts or lengths of rubber turned buttocks of beaten prisoners into raw flesh. Sergeant Don MacPhail said that he was hung from a tree over three fresh graves and beaten with sticks. He was told that he would be in the fourth grave...
Although there seemed to be far fewer beatings at the hands of the Viet Cong, conditions in the South held their own horror. One prisoner was buried up to his neck for days. Another, who was suffering from dysentery, was denied medical assistance and finally suffocated in his own excrement. For those well enough to walk, there were endless work details. Army Major William Hardy, captured in 1967, figures that the Viet Cong "treated me like a slave" because he is black and "they believed all they heard about Negroes still being treated like slaves...
Things have been especially bad since the ceasefire. When told of the Paris settlement, the prisoners cheered, only to be stopped by doses of lye and bamboo. "We had hoped to begin the New Year with happiness," said one. "But my New Year began when I was doused with excrement...
...official sources say that before October 1969, when conditions improved, psychological and physical torture often occurred. Prisoners were hung upside down from beams until they were ready to talk, made to stand for hours without being allowed to move, and forced to crawl through latrines filled with human excrement. They were beaten with clubs and rifle butts...
Equilibrium. A less dramatic but equally pertinent example of nature's shortcomings is its inability to recycle all the wastes it creates. One instance of such a breakdown of "ecological equilibrium" is the accumulation of tons of guano (bird excrement) along the coast of Peru. Indeed, he noted, it is only when man collects the guano for fertilizer that the nitrogen-and phosphate-rich material is eventually returned to the "biological cycle in the form of plant nutrient." Guano is not the only example of nature's garbage. Peat, coal and even oil are all organic materials that...