toon #1
Following is the link to Sandy Downs’ and my interview by Matt Gardi on KONKnet, re the Key West Tree Commission. 1-hour interview, less station breaks. It took me 5 minutes to download it on my laptop. I understand the interview will be available for downloading and replaying until April 3.
Naked Conch_031612_Sloan_Sandy Downs.mp3

toon #2
I obtained from Robert Krutko’s lawyer a copy of Key West’s Motion for Summary Judgment in the lawsuit Krutko’s wife filed against Key West in federal court, in Miami. The city’s legal team, which includes a mainland law firm and Key West City Attorney Shawn Smith, claims the city never, ever, ran, or tried to run anyone out of business. Not just Krutko, but not anyone. I imagine Duck Tours’ owner and lawyer, Radim Haviliceck and Sandy Downs would beg to disagree. I told Krutko’s lawyer about when Jimmy Weekley was on the City Commission, which was before he became Mayor, and that city commission authorized the then city legal team to “grind Duck Tours into dust.” Krutko’s lawyer said he had never heard of that before. I told him it is common knowledge in Key West, was in the newspapers.
If I wuz Krutko’s lawyer, I would subpoena Jimmy Weekley to that hearing in Miami, and put him on the stand, and have him, under oath, tell the United States District Judge everything he knows about the Duck Tours case, including the jury finding anti-trust violations against the city, affirmed on appeal, and the ultimate $6.5 million settlement.

toon #3
My dreams and other spirit signals seem to indicate I am to run as a write-in candidate for the District 3 School Board seat now held by Duncan Matthewson, who has announced he will not run again.
Back in 2004, I announced as a write-in candidate for Sonny McCoy’s county commission seat. Then, I got all mixed up in my thinking, among other things, and dropped out of that race. Then, Damian Vantrigilia ran as a write-in candidate and, as I recall, got nearly 2,000 votes. The best performance, ever, for a write-in candidate in the Keys, Damian later told me Harry Sawyer (Supervisor of Elections) had told him.
I ran into Damian last Sunday evening at Boondocks. He was taking photos for Michael Cunningham, who launched his campaign for the District 3 School Board seat that evening, and had invited me and, I’m sure, lots of other people to attend.
When Damian suggested a photo of Michael and me together, I laughed, said, might cost Michael votes to be seen arm-in-arm with me in a photo. Didn’t seem to bother Michael, though. Damian took the photo, as I thought to myself about him having run as a write-in candidate after I went off the edge of the world in 2004.
I thought that to myself because there already had been several nudges re my running as a write-in candidate, but I had not said a word to anyone, until I told Todd German yesterday.
As I recall, the good thing about running as a write-in candidate is no filing fee or candidate petitions to be signed, and no campaign treasurer reports. But you can attend and hold forth at candidate forums, and can receive votes by people simply writing your name on the ballot at the place for the office you seek.
I imagine my main focus will be to try to persuade the public that this school district either needs to be privatized like the new charter high school in Key West, or it needs to be taken over by Tallahassee, and if elected, I will do my darndest to bring off that off.
Wonder if it violates the separation of church and state requirements of the First Amendment for a school board candidate to talk about God during his campaign? What if a school board member talks about God at a school board meeting? The Founding Fathers talked about God in the Declaration of Independence.

On yet another Keys toon front, recent banter with Mark Howell, Editor of Solares Hill, published on Sundays by The Key West Citizen, re God – the Catch 22 of Catch 22s post

From: mhowell@keysnews.com
To: keysmyhome@hotmail.com
Subject: from Mark at Solares Hill
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:34:14 -0400

Good post today, Sloan –– Mark

thanks, Mark, but it felt like shit – me – putting it together…

“Ah, but it wouldn’t be life if there were not sorrow, loss, loss, loss,” said Joseph Campbell. “You gotta say yes to it and say it’s great this way, I mean I don’t believe anybody intended it but this is the way it is. Pain is part of there being a world at all. I’ll do the best I can…. I will participate in the game. It’s a wonderful, wonderful opera —except that it hurts. This is the way life is. And the hero is the one who can participate in it decently — in the way of nature. Not in the way of personal rancor, revenge or anything of that kind.”That any help?
-Mark

Hi, Mark
That’s pretty much how I was taught to participate in the game; was a slow transition, since I was mostly prone to retaliate, rather than cleverly swim it back up their hinneys, or not even respond at all, or turn it into comic relief. However, I don’t generally see it as a wonderful opera, more like tragic with some comedy, and it hurts plenty most of the time, up close and personal hurt. If I did not have that wailing opera around and inside me nearly all the time, maybe I would feel more overwhelmed by what all I see going on around me, close by and far away.
Sandy Downs is far more sensitive and vulnerable, than I, to what she sees going on outside of her. She viscerally recoils in her soul at injustice, meanness. Makes it all the harder for her respond with cold dispassion. She reminded me the other day of a passage in the Gospels where Jesus chides his disciples for taking offense when they are attacked by other people for doing what he had them do. Being attacked is part of the job description, is his point. He is attacked plenty, and his method of responding is exemplary. No prisoners taken.
I told Sandy, the way I look at it, if I’m not pissing people off, I’m doing it wrong. In the Gospels, Jesus seems to go out of his way to piss people off, but you don’t hear it described that way in churches. He also is gracious, kind. He gives his disciples hell lot of the time. In India, he would be viewed as a high guru, perhaps the highest. But to call him a guru around these parts might not be received very well, although all guru means is teacher, which Jesus is sometimes called in the Gospels. And rabbi, and master, labels similar what India gurus wear. And to labels Buddha, I imagine, and Lao Tzu wore.
I saw Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey” in Boulder, in 1988. [A documentary on Campbell, as I recall.] Lots of people there were very affected by him. I already was abducted and was starting to sense it was not going to be controlled by me. I had no clue yet just how little control I would have, except over how I chose to respond to what was served to me by the abductors, on this world, in the spirit world, inside my body. Seriously not something to look forward to, I came to see. Waaaa!!!!

Sloan
keysmyhome@hotmail.com

As I watched the newish moon rise over Venus yesterday evening, I recalled Luna is a name sometimes used for the moon. Then I recalled lunatic is derived from Luna. Then I connected some dots and noted lunacy is the result of serious disturbance in the feminine aspect of a person. Same applies to a country. Same applies to a species. In this case, homo sapiens. But that’s too broad a topic to cover today.

Letter to the Editor in The Key West Citizen this morning:

Reality doesn’t match the campaign rhetoric

We’ve been up to our eyeballs in campaign rhetoric for the past few months, but a couple of large items have been left conspicuously out of frame.

While they lament the current administration’s willingness to print money with no end in sight, each of the candidates has studiously avoided explaining why the previous Republican White House felt secure in doubling the national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion over the course of just two terms. The U.S. went from being the world’s largest creditor to the world’s biggest debtor in just eight years of Republican stewardship. How can such a vast increase in taxpayer obligation have occurred under “conservative” stewardship? Those are some really big numbers.

Let’s look at something that also requires a Ph.D. in economics to comprehend — affordable health care insurance. The candidates bewail what they see as the irresponsibility of people in lower tax brackets to sponge off regular taxpayers, like you and me, when they show up in hospital emergency rooms without a valid health insurance policy.

Suppose we are working at a minimum wage job and we get into a traffic accident on the way to work. At $7.21 an hour, we’re earning about $288 a week, or $1,154 a month, pretax. If we had been responsible citizens and budgeted for regular, market rate health insurance, we would be paying $800 to $900 a month for a basic policy. That would leave us about $75 a week, tops, for frivolities like rent, food, children’s education and laundry. Oh, and income tax. The numbers, quite clearly, do not work out.

And it’s not just Republicans. No one, it seems, has a magic bullet for these difficult budget dilemmas. We have more productive capacity, way more, than we know what to do with, period. That’s not an easy problem to resolve, but we can at least focus on the root causes of that monster problem and not continue to bathe ourselves in mind numbing waves of misdirection. In the months to come, let’s hope the Democrats do not also elect, rhetorically, to “blame the cops for the crime rate.”

Paul Williams
Key West

I have yet to hear from any President Obama basher one iota of admission that President Bush plunged America deep into debt. It’s as if there was no other president before President Obama. It’s as if President Bush did not start two foreign wars and lower taxes on the Richliklans, something no other president, not even a Richliklan president, had ever dreamed of doing. All I hear from President Obama bashers, I get plenty of perjured political and religious forwards bashing him, is they will vote for any Richliklan candidate who ends up with the nomination, no matter who he is (no she’s in sight this year). It’s their religion to vote against President Obama. It’s their fanaticism.

While I do not hold a PhD in economics, I do hold a B.A. in economics from Vanderbilt University. I minored in business administration. I later worked a few years for a fairly large Alabama corporation, by Alabama standard. I learned you don’t spend money you do not have. You do not borrow money you cannot repay. Not if you want to remain in business. Not if you want to stay out of the US Bankruptcy Court. But there’s the rub. While US citizens and corporations and the states and municipalities have to live within their means, Uncle Sammy does not. He does not, quel dommage, have to worry about the US Bankruptcy Court or being homeless, because he can borrow money and raise taxes – translates, he can counterfeit US greenbacks, which is a prison offense for anyone else. It once was a capital offense, equivalent to treason.

Imagine if Uncle Sammy, be he Richliklan or Demoncrat, or whatever, had to live within his means. Imagine what that would do to Washington, D.C. Imagine what that would do to every US Representative and Senator. Imagine what that would do to every US President. Why, it would cause them to be FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE. It would cause them to give up all of their petty pet screw all the US taxpayers but their home constituents schemes. It would cause them to stop voting for deficit spending. It would cause them to stop waging wars for which there is no money to pay the troops and arms manufacturers and oil and chemical companies which enable Uncle Sammy to wage those wars. It would cause them to stop paying for Uncle Sammy’s overseas military bases. It would cause them to stop subsidizing Israel. It would be the end of foreign aid. It would be the end of corporate tax breaks and bailouts. It would be the end of oil depletion allowances and R & D write-offs. It would be the end of private school subsidies. It would be the end of farm subsidies. It would be the end of all bailouts. It would be the end of THE RICHLIKLANS AND THE DEMONCRATS.

The Richiliklans religiously forget the big river in Africa, when they blame President Obama for all the corporate bailouts President Bush invented. Oh, but bailing out Detroit and Wallstreet and big banks was the American thing to do, it was patriotic, thus it was not a bailout – it was national defense, homeland security. It was mom’s apple pie. De Nilists have such short memories. Even as they rightly, I think, attack President Obama’s mandatory national health insurance plan, for which an article in The Citizen today indicates questions from the US Supremes do not bode well. Seems one of the Supremes wants to know if a national law can be passed requiring Americans to eat brocoli, or beets, or corn bread? Or whatever. What does Uncle Sammy intend to do to Americans who, as Paul Williams asks, cannot pay into his national health care plan? Are they arrested and sent to prison? Are their bank accounts seized? Are their wages garnished? What idiot mind dreamt this up?

I spent some time in Costa Rica in 2000. I learned Costa Rica has universal health care. The total cost to me was about $29 for getting logged into their records. All the rest was free. Perhaps $10,000 in medical treatment, including surgery, drugs, aftercare, from being torn up by a German shepherd. And I wasn’t even a Costa Rican. I was a white gringo, who did not even hablas Espanol, which is the Costa Rican language. Now how could that happen, that I was treated for free? If you can’t figure it out, you must be a Richliklan or a Demoncrat. You could not be a Paulian. No way could you be a Paulian, because a Paulian already would have shouted because Costa Rica has NO MILITARY!!! And there you are, folks. There is the reason America is so SNAFU’d economically. It spends more money on its military than all the other countries in the world combined spend on their military. Ron Paul would bring all the troops home. As would I, were I El Presidente. We will need them all home soon enough anyway, to defend Americans from Americans.

Meanwhile, to the Richliklans who keep sending me forwards bashing President Obama for letting in wetbacks who do not speak English, while ignoring how many wetbacks who did not speak English President Bush let into Texas when he was its governor because Texas’ economy would be bankrupt if it did not let in wetbacks to do all the low-paying hard sweaty jobs Americans won’t do. To the Richliklans who don’t want anyone in America but natural born American citizens who speak natural born American English, do you have a clue what would happen to the national economy if you get your way? Are you going to do the low-paying hard sweaty jobs the wetbacks are doing? Of course you are not going to do those jobs. You are going to export them to China and Indonesia and Mexico, where your NAFTA factories are because the labor is so cheap. You are so De Nile’d up that you don’t even remember your mother and father’s first names. So, instead of embarrassing you by asking you what their first names are, let me ask you what Uncle Sammy will do to Americans who cannot afford his mandatory health insurance? Right, deport them for unAmerican activity.

Don’t ask me what the cure is for $4 a gallon regular gasoline. I have no clue what the cure for that is. Nor does anyone else. Perhaps, hmmm. Sorry, nothing comes to me other than walking, riding bicycles and horses, or donkeys. Wonder how my Vanderbilt economics professors and Kappa Alpaha Order white-supremacist Christian fraternity brothers would cotton to that?

For how Uncle Sam’s lunacy bleeds down into the alleged capitol of the Asteroid Belt, here is a link to Sandy Downs’ and my Key West Tree Commission interview with Matt Gardi on Konknet a while back. It’s about a 5-minute download on my laptop.

Download the file – Naked Conch_031612_Sloan_Sandy Downs.mp3

Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com

In the spring of 2001, the angels sent me from Key West to Helen, Georgia, to spend the summer. Shortly after arriving there, I met a fellow named Davis Broadway, who was born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama, and attended the University of Alabama. On graduating, he went into the Alabama National Guard and attended a basic training camp in Texas, as did my brother Major. Davis and Major became good friends. Davis and I had many conversations about Major, and when Major went missing and I started writing about that at my websites, Davis chimed in that I had Major sized up pretty well. Davis replied to yesterday’s spiritual terrorism and other follies post as follows:

SLOANISHKY MY MAN… CIOLINO P.I. IS TOTALLY OFF THE WALL ABOUT HIS SUPPOSITIONS ETC. OF MAJOR’S DEATH. OBVIOUSLY AS YOU AND OTHERS HAVE STATED, HIS STATEMENT ” PEOPLE DON’T TIE THEMSELVES UP WHEN THEY COMMIT SUICIDE UNLESS THEY WANT TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE A NATURAL DEATH” DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. I CAN SEE MAJOR GRINNING IN HIS FINAL MOMENTS THINKING HE HAD STAGED THE PERFECT MURDER SCENE… HIS VANITY WOULD HAVE PREVAILED (SAVED HIM) IF HE THOUGHT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN RULED A SUICIDE AND HE WOULD STILL BE WITH US!

Reply to yesterday’s post, from an Alabama lawyer amigo, who for many years was the lead defense lawyer in his city’s Public Defender office. He represented clients charged with the most serious offenses, including death penalty offenses. Hawkman also felt Major’s death was self-inflicted, before the county coroner and city police department concluded it was suicide made to look like murder.

Sloan,

One overreaching fact regarding the Birmingham Police Department and any other PD such at Mountain Brook or Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office is that there are homicide detectives who would give their “eyeteeth” to have a homicide like Major’s to break a murder case. While some of these guys may be lifers just waiting to retire, there are young Turks, chopping at the bits for the high profile case to make their career. I’ve death with them for about 3-1/2 decades, so I know something about their nature. I know from my experience that there was no “high places” influence to “call off the dogs” to protect the Bashinsky name.

Hawkman

Hi, Mike. Thanks.

From all I heard shortly after Major went missing, and from the extensive records the FBI sent to me on the case, the FBI also was deeply involved in the investigation. I remain of the view, however, that the Birmingham News was gotten to re anything to do with me, and I remain of the view the News did a lousy job of reporting when the coroner and police department issued their pretty much joint suicide determination. Up till then, the News was all over the case.

I told mi amiga Sandy Downs, the same model rare pistol found in the golf course pond, which was “under glass” in my father’s home, pretty much eliminated his widow having anything to do with it. She might as well have left her fingerprints on the pistol in the pond. As I wrote, it would be like Major to obtain the same model rare pistol, since his father had one. Which, it sure looked to me, was pretty convincing evidence Major shot himself in the pond, or perhaps someone he trusted did it.

What puzzled me, which should have puzzled the Birmingham News, I saw no mention of fingerprints on the pistol in any law enforcement records, nor in the coroner’s report, nor in anything reported by the Birmingham News. Nor any mention of fingerprints on anything at the crime scene. Would long immersion in water eliminate fingerprints Mr. former Public Defender?

Sloan

Sloan,

I’ll have to check on the fingerprints question. I do know that when the prosecution/cops wanted to make a point of fingerprints, it was said that fingerprints could be taken off a corpse that had been in water for a protracted period. But if they should have tested for prints and didn’t have any or couldn’t match the defendant’s, they would testify you couldn’t get them off a clean piece of furniture. In more recent years, the whole idea of fingerprints as solid evidence has come under overdue scrutiny and now you can get experts saying its junk science. It is odd no mention was made. I will make some inquiries about a gun in water.

Hawkman

I told Sandy last night, for Major’s sake, and for the sake of many people, Major could not be allowed to get away with it.

From Sancho Panza yesterday:

Hey Sloan… you said that: “I was, still am, Major’s brother and his keeper. I hope he is in a more peaceful place now, but I fear he still has a way to go before he gets there. I could make some suggestions re what he might do, but have not been asked by him to do so.”

You mean that there are things that people can “do” after they blow their brains out, or hang themselves like your hero the judge? I mean, where do you go to get punished then… if there is always something else that one can do to make amends even after this life? You are sort of undermining the whole Religion as Salvation Racket!

But now… just between us old farts…. you don’t really have conversations with the dearly departed… you just mean that you dream about them and you interpret the dream(s) according to things that may be happening around you at the time?! Sort of like tapping into an epiconcious realm of awareness where all memories and connections maybe permanently recorded… and that may include feelings and nonverbal impressions… might even include the “consciousness” of the 100 trillion strong symbionts that share your being.

I replied:

Major did not cease to exist, he merely left his human body. I get very little about him in dreams. When my father died, I heard in a dream, “Chips going to heaven.” Chips, I took to mean Golden Flake potato chips, my father. Then, he came to me in a dream and said he had not gotten to do all he wanted to do, and I awoke knowing he was asking for my help. I grumbled, yeah, because he didn’t want to take care of it. Then came the things he’d left undone, and I tried to take care of them, but it ended up all I could do was make some changes in my own estate plan.

Was that really my father, or an angel posing as him? Does it matter? My father comes to me in a dream perhaps every two weeks. Major comes to me in lots of dreams, but not about his business. Lots of people come to me in dreams, with advice, clues.

Tiger Woods in the past two days came to me in two dreams, which I figured out and applied to something in my waking life. One dream resulted in my putting the new page on Major onto goodmorningbirmingham.com. Then, today I was told in a Tiger dream to go down to Key West to something I didn’t want to attend on child sex trafficking, nor did I feel up to going anywhere. Probably good I went, though; probably will do a post on it tomorrow for the two Keys websites. Perhaps will put it on the Bham website, too. Seems pretty important. Where do your gut microbes fit into that cosmology?

The judge who blew his brains out was old, his body was worn out and not functioning well, he had two artifical legs below the knees since he was 15, his beloved wife of maybe 50 years had died in his arms of a cerebral hemorrhage maybe 10 years before. He had lived an exemplary life. He was revered by probably thousands. If he had been a Cherokee Indian in 1700, before white people brought their religion to Alabama, he would have separated himself from the tribe and gone into the forest to die and let the animals have his remains. He was part Cherokee, I think.

You sometimes say things, which really could come back in karma spades on you. You speak about things about which you have had no experience, as if you are an expert.

There are things Major can do.

He could visit his four children in dreams, and start the healing they very badly need. Same with his wife, the mother of his two younger children. He could visit his and my sister. He could visit the Legal Schnauzer fellow and straighten him out.

Once we cross over, we are apprised of our impending life review, which we experience, for the most part, from the other people’s side in their dealings with us in this life. We see, hear and feel from inside their skin. It’s a fast-forward thing, not all that long in spirit time, but perhaps pretty long in human time. It’s not elective, but the time is not fixed for doing it. Some souls take a while to get around to it; some souls do it in steps; some plunge in and do it quickly. Then, the next stage of the journey begins, which the departed’s soul/spirit, now “up to speed”, gets to participate in designing.

I wrote to my father about that from Mauritius in June 2000, and said he could do the life review, or part of it, in this life. I figured he would take the letter as yet another positive proof I was nuts, as it goes squarely against Christian theology, but is not all that antagonistic to the Catholic version of purgatory. Where does your gut microbe God fit into that cosmology? No doubt, gut microbes have a part in the unfolding drama, but I seriously doubt they are running the show. I knew when I wrote that letter to my father that I was getting life review before I died. Most of it very unfun. It started in August 1988. It’s still underway.

Yeah, I know there is no way I can prove anything I wrote above. Nor can I prove Major killed himself. But he did, and what other people believe does not change that. Belief is only belief. It does not determine reality, but it can influence how it plays out for the believer while still in human form. Once on the other side, though, belief is obliterated in favor of what is, and the life review is a major part of the obliteration.

Ciao

Sancho replied to mine:

On 3/25/2012 7:16 PM, sloan bashinsky wrote:
Yeah, I know there is no way I can prove anything I wrote above. Nor can I prove Major killed himself. But he did, and what other people believe does not change that. Belief is only belief. It does not determine reality, but it can influence how it plays out for the believer while still in human form. Once on the other side, though, belief is obliterated in favor of what is, and the life review is a major part of the obliteration.

Ciao

I guess that says it all! Hey, thanks for your thoughtful response… I hope that you are right about the other side!

Also received this yesterday, from a Birmingham ex pat living in Lousiana:

Hey Sloan – read your post and have to say it’s wow – pretty heavy. Easy to understand the conflicted feelings/hauntings. Not something that can readily be put to rest.

I replied:

Hi, Scottie. Yeah, heavy. Perhaps more tomorrow. And something plenty heavy down here, too, perhaps for tomorrow also. Feel like I swallowed Chernobyl. Sloan

The heavy down here can be reached by clicking on this link: child sex trafficking – Florida Keys inquiry, which is supposed to take you to Today’s FlaKey Drivel at goodmorningfloridakeys.com.

 sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

Received this from Connie Gilbert of Key West. She has been on my email hit list for some years now.

Sloan, is that you?!? I was trying to access my email from the botanical garden, where I volunteer every Fri afternoon (it’s verrrry slow at the moment, and my home computer has issues) and this popped up. Did my op ed piece in the Citizen — sometime early Nov., I think — address any of your concerns? My point was that we’re not into fundraisers beyond free will donations at our programs — as the rescreening of George Clooney’s deeply affecting documentary, “Playground”–he’s co-producer–this Sunday 2-4 at Casa Marina. And that money goes to the film distributor, as did most of that which we were given at the Jan. rally at KWHS. I also have secret info that will destroy the “not in the Keys” argument but await permission to reveal it. Tell your folks about “Playground” please! –cg

Hi, Connie.

Didn’t see your op ed piece.

First I’ve heard of “Playground”. Googled it, Clooney, didn’t see anything.

What is the “not in the Keys” argument?

What secret info?

I need to know a lot more.

Sloan

Phone is too primitive but all I’ve got; Clooney co-produced film–please come!–argument is that we’re wrong to pursue issue as it doesn’t happen here. Fear it happens everywhere! Haven’t won back Dennis but I’m still hopeful. Come see the film tomorrow 2-4 at Casa Marina — and we’ll talk–will make copy of op-ed for you.

Sent from my iPhone

Connie

Perhaps State Attorney Dennis Ward, who initially was on Keys Coalition’s board of directors.

I wrote back to Connie:

Might come down to check it out, but I don’t even know what the issue is.

I wrote later:

Spoke with Todd German just now re several things. Then, I asked if he knew what the thing at Casa Marina is about? He said it is a continuation of Tim Gratz’s thing I wrote a good bit about last year.

I wrote not favorably to Tim, nor about the local people letting him throw their names around to promote his cause.

Child sex trafficking is horrible. However, I wish you had told me who is behind the Casa Marina event this p.m. That you did not, that you furnished no details, not even an explanation of the subject, after I told you I needed a lot more, disturbs me, Connie. As does your lending your name to Tim Gratz.

I told Todd I don’t need to see a documentary to know how bad this problem is, but it is not a problem the Keys currently face. Even so, I might get nudged to come down there later today, to observe how Gratz is going about it now, and perhaps to report on that, as well as the film.

Sloan

Connie replied:

Sorry for silence, but computer has been down and this is the first I’ve gotten to mail since yesterday. Hope this afternoon allayed some concerns. Tim is overenthusiastic and not socially/PR savvy, but his heart’s in the right place; he’s also very bright and devoted to the cause. Pls suspend judgment for a bit.

Sent from my iPhone

Connie

I, Sloan, felt horrible yesterday, and spent much of the day in bed, napping. Didn’t want to go anywhere, but in my third nap, Tiger Woods came to me in a dream and by the time the dream was over and I was waking up again, feeling mostly dead, I understood I was to go down to the Keys Coalition event.

I arrived about 2:45, the movie was showing. Someone handed me a sign-up sheet, which I said I would not sign because I did not want my name on it being shown around later, implying I was recommending Keys Coalition.

I watched about fifteen minutes of the film. It was about really bad stuff, both sex trafficking and sexual child abuse, which are related but not the same thing. The different stories were horrible, but there was too much and I was wearing out fast. Several people left, who were there when I arrived. I went over to Connie and said it was too much, they were running people away with the movie about something I thought everyone there already knew about. I asked her to go outside with me, which she did.

I said what is in the film indicates the state of humanity, the problem is very old and is world-wide. There is no solution. Connie said, like the fall of Rome. I said, like the fall of humanity. The Keys Coalition woman Connie was working with, sorry her name escapes me, came out and said Tim had stopped the movie and was talking. We went back inside.

Tim seemed sincere. He described efforts to get legislation passed in Florida to make it a crime to advertise/promote child pornography/sex trafficking online. He said they were trying to get other legislation passed, allowing victims sue the people who lured them into it.

I said there might be federal/state interstate law conflicts, and in any event, better to get a federal law passed to stop the online promotion. Put the perps in prison. I said a law allowing for civil damage lawsuits against perps was not a good idea because it would lure young people to get involved in sex trafficking so they could later file suit and collect big damages.

A woman in the audiences said she was a clinical social worker, and when she lived in Ohio, I think was the state she said, they passed laws against this sort of thing up there. It looked great on paper, but in effect and enforcement, nothing came of it. She said it is well known that girls who run away from home tend to get into sex trafficking. She did not sound enthusiastic about making much headway.

One segment of the film spoke of the Stockholm syndrome. Kids who get involved with sex traffickers end up liking and wanting to protect them. Make prosecution nigh to impossible.

Someone said kids in foster homes get sexually abused.

I said sexual abuse is widespread.

There was discussion of the 211 help line and the 1-888-3737-888 hotline. I said a local hotline is needed for sex trafficking and sexual abuse.

I suggested they forget about Florida and the rest of the US, and focus their efforts on trying to keep child sex trafficking out of the Keys.

They did not produce any evidence yesterday of child sex trafficking in the Keys. The one case Connie had raised in her email, Tim said at the meeting involved an 18-year old girl in Key West, who had escaped from someone she was working for. Perhaps she was lured in when she was a minor.

I left the meeting with Jenna Stauffer, who had been introduced during the meeting as a television journalist with local channels 19 and 77. I told her people who get involved in causes such as this need to be very careful, because often it is about them. I said Connie and I both had to be very careful, because we both were molested in childhood. I was trained not to project my wounding into causes that resembled my wounding, but it was hard for Connie not to do that, as is it hard for anyone not to do that, including me.

That is similar to the Stockholm syndrome. A cause comes along, which is about what happened to us, and we jump in all the way because it is ourselves we are trying to save. I wish I could save every child from what I saw in that movie, but I know I cannot, and I frankly see no way to do much about it.

I knew yesterday that I was being taken once again into when I molested my younger sister, when I was 15, about which I wrote in posts a few months ago. I also knew I was being taken back into my mother molesting me. I thought child sex trafficking is horrible, but it is no worse than child molestation, which is far more common, to the extent it dwarfs child sex trafficking. Laws on the books have not stopped child molestation, and they will not, I don’t think, stop child sex trafficking, which is not limited to girls and young women. Young boys and young men are involved, too, although not as much.

Received these emails last night from Connie:

So glad you attended and all the points you raised were very good and I am considering them.

I am going to forward some things for your review.

One of the best anti-trafficking organizations that fights trafficking is the Polaris Project which runs the National Hotline. Your idea about a local hotline was interesting. The point about the Polaris number is that their operators are so well-trained.’

Here is a link to the Polaris Project:

http://www.polarisproject.org/

Attached is a copy of the laws passed in Washington state to criminalize posting sex ads for minors. Connecticut is considering a very similar law,
But we would agree it needs to be done on a federal level.

Here is a link to a news article on the proposed Connecticut law:

http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2012/03/25/news/connecticut/doc4f675bc24a912636573225.txt

Note that it has a potential penalty of ten years in prison.

Here ia a link to the story about the Key West man held for trafficking.

The victim was not a minor but clearly held against her will.

http://www.examiner.com/strange-news-in-national/florida-key-s-man-derrick-wilson-charged-with-sex-trafficking

Should you decide to write on the Coalition, it is interesting but coincidental that this arrest occurred only two days before our meeting.

PS asked Tim to send you e-copy of my op-ed.

Sent from my iPhone

Connie

Don’t want to swamp you with e-mails so I will try to make this the last.

1. We agree I think that a priority ought to be the passage of a federal law making it a crime to knowingly or recklessly advertise a minor for sex on the internet..
We agree that those who do so ought to be jailed. I know that a county organization has little “clout”. I am working on pulling together a group of national or regional sntti-trafficking groups that will advocate such a change, for the next Congress.

2. You made a very interesting point that if minor victims of trafficking sold on the Internet are permitted to sue it might encourage girls to enter “the game” just so they could sue. No one else had raised this point before. I will think about it and circulate it to others who had been supporting the idea.

3. I agree with you that a primary goal should be prevention. One of the ways of accomplishing this might be identifying children who are at risk and getting them help. In fact, Rabbi Duda made this point at a meeting last November. If the point is helping troubled young people that becomes a meritorious objective in itself. Other than church groups, I am not sure if any social service agency in Monroe County performs this function. There is a very good but lengthy paper called to the effect “Treating Trafficking” as a health care issue. I’ll send it to you but only if you request.

Nicholas Kristof has been an advocate against child sex trafficking both internationally and domestically for years. In fact my interest in this was sparked by a piece he wrote for the NY Times that was reprinted in the Citizen.

Here is a recent piece he wrote about the internet marketing of young girls:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/opinion/how-pimps-use-the-web-to-sell-girls.html?_r=1

Totally agree with you that the people authorizing this stuff for economic gain deserve imprisonment.

———————————-

It probably is no consolation to people who were sexually molested in childhood, or were lured into child sex trafficking, but I can say for a fact that I was not allowed to get away with what I did to my sister. I was given an affliction that destroyed my life, as I knew it. Eventually, everyone who abuses a child is tried, convicted and sentenced, if not in this life, then in the hereafter. As Jesus said in the Gospels, woe be unto anyone who harms even a hair on the head of a child.

I found myself thinking last night, as important as prevention of child sex trafficking in the Keys is, providing counseling to children, and also to adults, who were sexually molested or involved in sex trafficking is just as important. The soul wounding in such people is horrific. It really cannot be resolved by human therapeutic methods, but it can be alleviated some, and that can open the door to angelic healing, such as I received, such as I have seen a few women I have known well receive.

Such healing is not of this world and is not easy. In fact, it is anything but easy. And in moments, it is terrifying, as the worse of the trauma is emotionally relived in steps, until it is all relived. I told the clinical social worker after the meeting yesterday, I once was married to a clinical social worker and learned a lot from her. I did not say, after she was done teaching me what she knew, the angels taught me a good bit more, and they used me as their patient teaching model.

Sloan

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com

on the beach

Yesterday, I put up a new page at this website re my brother Major’s death in March 2010:

Major Bashinsky – Legal Schnauzer v. Bash, Jefferson County Coroner and Birmingham Police Department

But not without plenty of struggle.

I felt my dreams said I should create that page, which I did. Then, I had terrible dreams and removed it. Then, I had dreams causing me to think I should put it up again, which I did. Then, I had awful dreams and took it down again. Then, I had more dreams causing me to to think I should put it up again, which I did. The ordeal took three days, I felt poisoned the whole time, and was terrified. Terrified to leave it up, terrified not to leave it up. My dreams last night were easier, very old business being put to bed.

I told Sandy Downs, who ran for sheriff down here in 2008, all the while I was writing into the Rutgers gay hate crime conviction, I was writing privately to a blogger in Birmingham, Legal Schnauzer, who keeps publishing articles challenging the coroner and police’s suicide conclusion in Major’s case. Because Major was bi-sexual, which lay at the root of his suicide, I understood the Rutgers case was my cue to engage Legal Schnauzer.

Sandy said she remembered back when I first put up posts about Major going missing, she wondered why I was writing he had killed himself and had tried to make it look like someone else had done it, before his body was even found and he was confirmed dead? She said when the coroner and police finally came to the same conclusion, people were terrified of me. She said people cannot deal with someone who knows stuff no one else knows.

Sandy said, if someone had killed Major and had wanted it to look like murder and not suicide, there would have been no doubt whatsoever it was murder. To that I add, if someone had wanted to send a message to the rest of the Bashinskys, there would have been no doubt whatsoever it was murder.

It said the same thing happened after I learned from dreams I and my then two best men friends had, that I had an older half brother by my father. That led to the end of what already was my father’s and my fragile relationship and, I’m pretty sure, contributed to my daughters shutting me out of their lives.

I cannot imagine how people in Birmingham and Alabama, after learning of my view of what had happened to Major, and then learning the coroner and police department later arrived at the same conclusion, did not believe Major killed himself. There could not have been a louder AMEN from God.

Major Bashinsky – Legal Schnauzer v. Bash, Jefferson County Coroner and Birmingham Police Department

comprehensively covers Major’s death, and, hopefully, is the last I ever will write about it.

That page is more representative of the kind of work I did before being sent to the Keys in late 2000, than is the Keys intrigue in which I tend to get tangled. A piece of which, perhaps as comic relief, is a recent email exchange with Deer Ed of the Coconut Telegraph of bigpinekey.com, reputed to get more traffic than any web page in the Keys, except the Sheriff’s who’s been arrested lately web page.

Hi Sloan,

You don’t think you are getting enough new visitors on your site from the link on the CT. I don’t think you realize that most people return to the CT more than once a week, thousands visit it very day! Those stats are not available on the free stat software that E uses. I used a paid version that breaks it down further than just the number of unique visitors.

I don’t think I ever mentioned this info about stats.

Ta, ta

Deer Ed

I replied:

Your higher stats on visits to my sites very well might be more realistic than what E provides. Don’t know what the stats on my sites are for quite a while.

I found myself thinking maybe yesterday, CT readers who really were interested in what I write, probably not a lot of them, came to my Keys websites after I stopped your and my arrangement; and the other CT readers didn’t really matter.

Seems really egotistical of me to pay you money so I can try to lure your readers to my sites, which take no paid ads, sell no products but a worse-selling novel which, so far, has produced maybe $25 in author’s royalties, and on which sites anything is free for the picking. While at the same time, I pay you for me to lure readers to your CT, which takes paid ads and advertises your pirate enterprise.

A few months ago, you told your readers you would never kick me off the CT, you liked my writings; you wished you had more writers like me, but didn’t see that happening. Would seem, therefore, you would give me the link over to the full goodmorning posts, which usually do not work on the CT format. Otherwise, I would send you the full posts to publish like you do From The Right. Does he pay you?

Paying you for the link to the full posts at my sites made some sense when I ran for office, but I did not run in 2010, and, so far, it does not seem I will run this year. If I have my way, I won’t run again. If I’d had my way, I would not have run the last five times, and most likely youse and mese would not have met and I would not have published anything on the CT, and maybe I wouldn’t have any websites.

The raving raven stalked me to goodmorningfloridakeys.com after I left the CT. I published a few of his and my back and forths in the comments section of that site. Then, I told him no mas until he provided his human name and proved it was him. I told him that I fixed it so all his comments at gmfk.com went into spam, where I would not read them, and if he emailed me and the email did not begin with his human name, I would not read it. Nothing more from him, so far.

That’s the other problem. I cannot financially support a site which encourages anonymous attacks on other people, which the CT does.

If you wish, treat this as a comment from Sloan to the CT.

Sloan

sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com