Is Russia Really The Baddie?

[Fred Steeves]

Walking away from the addictive illusions of righteous violence can be devastating.

It's been a drawn out Saul of Tarsus moment so to speak, and it was certainly traumatic at first. Over the course of 16 years now, I've ever so gradually gone from being a John Bolton type of neocon, yet one who also had a hippie side that liked to dabble in psychedelics, to where now I put myself in the anti war socialist camp. LOL guess which wolf pup ultimately wound up getting fed?


" I was in Nicaragua 25 years ago on a church mission to help rebuild from Hurricane Mitch devastation. We were working in a small village building cement block houses. We were certainly on the latafundia from the Somoza years. These were Sandinista families that benefited from land reforms. One woman had torn open a bag of USAID corn that had to last her and her children for 2 months. It was wet and it had worms in it. She was drying it out and picking out the worms. These were the people we were trying to kill -- subsistence peasants."

OMG I well remember Hurricane Mitch, that thing was a monster! Those poor people, that's awesome you were there to help, you must have many stories. If you like start a new thread, I'd love to hear more of your experience there and learn some things through your eyes. Seriously, first hand experience is invaluable.

Whew... that must give one such a clear eyed look at a besieged people when you're working and living amongst them. What the US did to that country, in the name of defeating the "bad guy commies", is unspeakable. I've never seen the level of poverty you describe.



"Thanks for your story. BTW did your job keep you busy rigging parachutes? I mean you weren't supporting the airborne invasion of Normandy."

Ha, good question. Actually that rating has two names, the full definition is "Aircrew Survival Equipmentman (PR)". The "PR" standing for parachute Rigger". Everybody just used PR for short.
Job Title

While I did learn how to pack parachutes in sport skydiving back in the day, and we also learned the navy way for aircraft parachutes in A school for the rating, the packing duties were/are actually done by a different branch of the same rating. They work at a land based shop, and were technically above us. My branch was out in the field as described, maintaining and inspecting pilot and air crew survival equipment that they wore on them on an ongoing daily basis. The pilots came through our shop coming and going during flight ops, or if they needed something or had a question. The closest my field branch came to the actual parachutes, was making sure on an ongoing basis that the apparatus was properly hooked up to the ejection seat. The ejection seats, whose responsibility beyond that of the parachute apparatus, was of an entirely different shop but with whom we worked closely.