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Poisoning the Orgonomic Wellspring: Carlinsky and CSICOP
Open Letter on Joel Carlinsky and the 18 June 2005
From James DeMeo, Ph.D.
Organized "Skeptics" War Against American Orgonomy
Director, Orgone Biophysical Research Lab
Ashland, Oregon, USA
http://www.orgonelab.org
E-mail to: info(at)orgonelab.org
(Click or copy into your email program and insert the "@" symbol)
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Contents of the Following Open Letter:
Introduction
Background of "Skeptic" Attacks Against Contemporary Orgonomy
My Research
Joel Carlinsky's Early Years in Orgonomy: Burglary, Hate, Intimidation, Provocations
My First Contact with Carlinsky
FBI Agent Provocateur?
The McCullough Burglary
Contaminating the Eden home with Radioactivity
The Blasband Burglary, FDA snooping, and the ACO Bomb-Threat
Carlinsky's Published Writings Attacking American Orgonomy, and Wilhelm Reich
Writing Smears for Peer Advocate
Article in an Unidentified "Skeptic" Newsletter
Carlinsky Introduces Reich into a Sleazy Pornographic Newspaper: Eidos
Carlinsky and Morrock, in Skeptic Magazine
Plotting an Anti-Orgonomy Book
Carlinsky's Unpublished Writings
More Hate-Mail, Telephone Threats & Dirty Tricks
Carlinsky's Crazy Confessionals
Confessions on Cloudbuster Terrorism
Carlinsky's "Orgonomy Peddlers" article, and the Shutdown of the Original OML
Hate-Mail and Provocations within Professional Circles
Plotting Smears with the Weather Modification Association
Plotting Smears with the False Memory Foundation
Carlinsky the CSICOP Informer and "Reichian" Consultant
Helping CSICOP's Patterson: Orgonomy Smeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association
Helping CSICOP's R. Baker Smear Reich & Orgonomy in a book
Helping CSICOP's J. Raso Smear Reich & Orgonomy in Another Book
Carlinsky Works to Publicly Link Reich and Cloudbusting to the Oklahoma City Terror Bombing.
Conclusions
POSTSCRIPT: The Emotional Plague, and Those Who Assist It
Mechanism of the Emotional Plague
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Introduction
The following Open Letter was prepared in response to a series of hostile attacks made against my person and work by Mr. Joel Carlinsky. While Carlinsky began his war-campaign against American orgonomy and myself in the 1970s, this Open Letter was prepared in response to new materials written by him which appeared and spread widely on the global internet since around mid-2004. In these attacks I have been accused of all sorts of things, most notably of creating widespread destruction in my 30-years of work investigating and applying the Reich cloudbuster to world regions of drought.
While I have over many years chosen to ignore the bulk of these accusations, as noted below I have previously written two rebuttal articles in response to articles Carlinsky published in print media -- and which also appeared on internet. However, the newer attacks were assisted by several individuals with prominent internet websites and e-groups, suggesting the facts about Carlinsky's history are too diffusely scattered for some people to know about them. Consequently, I undertook the larger task of organizing and exposing the following essential details in the form of an "Open Letter", to make the pertinent details more widely known.
Knowing how Carlinsky has so terribly attacked everyone in American orgonomy over nearly 30 years, how he works hand-in-glove with the organized "skeptic" groups -- including with persons such as Martin Gardner who were personally involved in destroying Dr. Wilhelm Reich and the burning of his books -- it strikes me that too many people either do not know the facts about his history, or they are themselves secretly on the side of the organized "skeptics" and want to see orgonomy destroyed and Reich's name and research legacy buried forever. Taken together with all the past abuses, the new Carlinsky webpages and email postings paint a false and malicious picture of me and others in American orgonomy, as well as a too-positive misportrayal of Carlinsky and his supporters. A need exists for factual clarification.
Before proceeding, let us firstly be clear about internet sources where Carlinsky has been routinely posting his attacks, starting in Summer of 2004 or earlier:
1. The "Orgonstar", "cloudbusting" and "Anti-Orgon-Nazi-League" webpages of John Trettin and Beate Freihold, as well as their "Wilhelm Reich List" email group. These contain the most outrageous distortions and lies about my work, and about American orgonomy, often being entirely ridiculous in nature, with an almost daily heaping of abuse, and numerous contributions from Carlinsky.
2. The "Orgonomy Mailing List" email group of Jamerling Ogg at Yahoo.com, which historically hosted Trettin and Carlinsky as contributors.
What I will detail in this Open Letter is Carlinsky's own distorted articles attacking not only Reich's American associates and advocates, but also Reich and orgonomy in total. I will also document his close working alliance with the CSICOP "skeptics" in their calculated attacks against Reich and orgonomy over many years, and how he helps them in efforts to discredit Reich and destroy orgonomy. Finally I will show that, while doing all the above, he often successfully masquerades as a "friend of Reich" to the point where he successfully recruits various naive or hate-filled "Reichians" to his cause of attacking those living scientists and physicians who today represent American orgonomy, even while the name of "Reich" is raised high on a banner. Reich's name is thereby abused by secret Reich-haters, to attack and destroy those professionals who are actually trying to engage in scientific study and life-positive applications of his discoveries. Carlinsky and his helpers have nothing to offer, by contrast, and their "work" appears mostly to be attacking people engaged in orgonomic work. Their's is the concealed behavior of the emotional plague, where the stated objectives are 180 degrees opposite of the real ones, and where the murderer of life cloaks himself in the finery and robes of the "protector of life". If the phrase "by their works shall ye know them" still holds meaning -- and it should -- one will learn the truth about Carlinsky from his own writings and actions.
Background of "Skeptic" Attacks Against Contemporary Orgonomy
Several excellent books have already been published detailing what is known about Reich's detractors. From these, we know that organized medicine, psychoanalysis and psychiatry were involved in the attacks against Reich. Stalinist left-wing "consumer activists" allied with "Big Medicine" and possibly pharmaceutical interests were also involved, and of course the central role of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is known, as well as the mindless and inexcusable conduct of the US Courts, which virtually shredded the US Constitution's First Amendment protections regarding freedom of speech and of the press, in the prosecutorial drive to bring Reich down and to "ban and burn" his research journals and books.
Reich's associate Dr. Theodore Wolfe wrote an excellent summary Emotional Plague versus Orgone Biophysics, The 1947 Campaign (Orgone Institute Press, NY, 1948) which provided foundational materials. Reich himself wrote extensively about the conspiracy and attacks directed against himself, in Conspiracy, An Emotional Chain Reaction (Orgone Institute Press, Rangeley, Maine, 1954) and The Red Thread of a Conspiracy, (Wilhelm Reich Biographical Material, History of the Discovery of the Life Energy, Documentary Supplement No. 2, A-XII-EP, Orgone Institute Press, Maine, 1955). Both Reich and Wolfe also wrote numerous short articles addressing considerations of the war against orgonomy being waged at that time.
After Reich's death, it was many years before any kind of in-depth investigation or analysis occurred, looking into the backgrounds of those who attacked and destroyed Reich. The first was a 3-part article series in the Journal of Orgonomy, by Dr. Richard Blasband and Dr. Courtney Baker (writing under pseudonym) "An Analysis of the United States Food and Drug Administration's Scientific Evidence Against Wilhelm Reich" (Journal of Orgonomy, 6(2):207-222, 1972, 6(2):222-231, 1972, and 7(2):234-245, 1973). This was followed by Jerome Greenfield's work Wilhelm Reich versus the USA (W.W. Norton, NY 1974) which dug into the internal documents of the FDA. But none of these excellent works, nor many other shorter articles, dug into the backgrounds of Reich's major critics, to investigate their histories and motivations. The first to undertake that task was Jim Martin, in the excellent book Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War (Flatland Books, Mendocino, CA, 2000). Martin's book documents the communist backgrounds of Reich's major detractors, how they were actually in close contacts with, or actual members of Soviet spy-rings working secretly in the USA during the 1940s and 50s, thereby validating Reich's own claims of a communist and possibly Soviet-inspired plot against him. Martin used the Freedom of Information Act to search out government documents from the FDA, FBI, CIA and NSA, and the findings are nothing less than stunning.
Add to this, the research by John Wilder summarized in his article "CSICOP, Time Magazine and Wilhelm Reich" (Pulse of the Planet 5:55-66 2002). This article demonstrated the Stalinist backgrounds of the major CSICOP founders. And this group -- CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, publisher of Skeptical Inquirer magazine) -- is the modern-day organized expression of the same emotional plague which murdered Reich through clever manipulations of government agencies and the US legal system. One of CSICOP's founding personalities, Martin Gardner, actually smeared Reich in a widely-read book (see Wilder's article, and below), throwing gasoline on the fire to propel the FDA's incompetent and phony "investigation". Other CSICOP high-ups have likewise personally attacked Reich, such as Leon Jaroff, science-editor for Time magazine, which made a terrible smear against Reich in their Millennium Edition. Jaroff acquired his position at Time around the same time his predecessor, the Stalinist Leon Svirsky (who also was friends with Mildred Brady), departed to work for Scientific American magazine, where he helped bring in Martin Gardner as a regular columnist. Wilder's article gives many details, and along with Martin's book are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the nature of the attacks against Reich in the USA. Those attacks flowed from two primary sources: organized medicine and psychoanalysis, and left-wing communist radicals cloaking themselves as "consumer activists". Individuals filled with hatred for Reich, whose working base was in one or another of these two camps, wrote inflammatory anti-Reich articles in major publications and used their personal connections to push the Food and Drug Administration (newly created under liberal-left Roosevelt-era legislation, with a "consumer activist" mission) to undertake its "investigation" of Reich.
The attacks against orgonomy after Reich's death has followed a similar pattern with many of the same personalities involved. The diffuse collection of "quack-busters" and "consumer activists" who wrote article after article denouncing not only Wilhelm Reich, but other biomedical pioneers such as Dr. Max Gerson and the lay-healer Harry Hoxsey, organized their efforts under the umbrella of CSICOP. CSICOP not only produced an influential publication Skeptical Inquirer, which went into nearly every university and public library, but they also established a network of "skeptic clubs" in major cities, creating an entire network by which scientists and physicians with unorthodox ideas might be identified and targeted with abuse. CISCOP thereby multiplied their numbers and influence, and one merely has to visit their website (www.csicop.org) to get a sense of the magnitude of their organizational outreach into both mainstream media and academic institutions. In 1992, G. P. Hansen wrote an excellent article "CSICOP and the Skeptics," (J. Amer. Soc. Psychical Research, Vol. 86, No. 1, January 1992, pp. 19-63) giving the background details of CSICOP's rise to power, their malicious attacks, used of deception and disinformation, and the lawsuits their materials often triggered. Consequently, the working relationship between Joel Carlinsky and the CSICOP "skeptics" is centrally important for the discussion here.
http://www.tricksterbook.com/ArticlesOnline/CSICOPoverview.htm
Finally I will add my own general observation, based in part on the Emotional Plague Bibliography where I gathered together all the various and known articles and books attacking Reich and orgonomy over the years.
http://www.orgonelab.org/bibliogPLAGUE.htm
Significantly, where one can determine the political orientations of the various anti-Reich (and anti-American-orgonomy) authors, and/or their publishers, they are nearly all creatures of the left-wing or liberal press. By my preliminary review, there is not a single "right-wing" or even "conservative" author or publication among them! The reader who might object to my observation is welcomed to review that same "EP Bibliography" online, and make their own assessment, and then to please educate me with any concrete facts which suggest otherwise. While Reich's FBI file does show he was denounced in private letters by a few Christian fundamentalists, there is no publicly distributed article or book I know about written by conservatives or right-wingers, or published in the conservative or right-wing press, denouncing Reich in the USA, nor denouncing orgonomy in general in the decades after Reich's death. But there are very many from the left-wing press, including from self-identified Marxists and socialists, and from the "humanistic atheists" who have firm connections to CSICOP. These considerations, together with the documentation gathered by Martin and Wilder, undermine the assertion made by several of Reich's biographers that Reich was destroyed by some kind of conservative or right-wing "McCarty-Era" reactionary impulse within American society. There is no evidence to support such a speculation.
It appears Reich simply does not show up on the right-wing or conservative radar screen. Or if he does, his ideas do not provoke their armor so much as he provokes the liberal-left. Also, liberals, socialists and communists often know about Reich for the historical reasons of Reich's anti-fascist writings from his psychoanalytical and Marxist period, during Hitler's rise to power in Germany. Those publications were later widely read within the student movement of the 1960s. However, in other writings as early as 1932, Reich publicly condemned both the Nazis and the Communist Party, accusing both of being power-seeking and unconcerned with human welfare and happiness. While Nazi power was destroyed during WW-II, the Communist Party and COMINTERN grew in power and spread globally, and the radical left of both Europe and the USA apparently never forgot or forgave Reich for his hard critique of socialism and communism. Left-wing writers who exclusively embrace Reich's early writings friendly to Marx, or who might even begrudgingly say a few kind words about his sex-economic and therapeutic work, have often expressed dismay or contempt towards his later post-Marxist research on genitality, bions, orgone energy, the accumulator and cloudbuster. Reich's later anti-communism is often mischaracterized as evidence of "paranoia" -- as if an ideology which killed 100 million people in the 20th Century should be of no worry to anyone. Such a hostile "diagnosis" of Reich evaporates under the harsh light of newer evidence gathered in Martin's Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War, and Wilder's article. Reich was correct about the role of malignant communists in the attacks against him in the USA, and some of the same characters re-appear in the more recent attacks against American orgonomy.
I have also written an "Editor's Postscript" to the Wilder article which reveals an additional component, perhaps even the more central motivating factor, to the organized "skeptic" assault upon Reich's research legacy: the fascinated engagement of many "skeptic"-types in pornography and pedophilia-rationalization. For one major example, Prometheus Books, a company run by CSICOP-founder Paul Kurtz, publishes such topical material, which are found in the back-pages of their printed book catalog. The authors of those books often are involved in public activities which are highly suggestive of a public promotion of the pedophile agenda, and an effort towards "softening up" of public attitudes regarding hard pornography. (see: "CSICOP, Prometheus Books, Pornography and the Journal of Pedophilia?!" Heretic's Notebook: Pulse of the Planet #5 2002, p.65). By contrast, Reich clearly identified the pornographer and pedophile as pathological, being the functional complement-opponent of the anti-sex Church moralist -- both stand in opposition to a more healthy and non-compulsive, non-pornographic peer-directed heterosexuality.
This alarming subject material is foundational for the discussion which follows, because these sex-economic and political factors appear as motivational underpinnings for an immense hatred of Reich and orgonomic discoveries, helping to at least partly understand the highly emotional and quite nasty and unrelenting nature of the CSICOP-skeptic and Carlinsky attacks upon American orgonomy. American orgonomy, for whatever its imperfections and periodic self-destructive actions, has publicly supported the full breadth of Reich's findings, from his early work on Function of the Orgasm and Mass Psychology of Fascism, to virtually all of Reich's later biophysical work, including bions, the orgone accumulator, the cloudbuster and even the UFO question. American orgonomy additionally has a clear history of repudiating communism and Marxist ideology, as well as right-wing fascism. Carlinsky also attacks anyone who supports the more conservative expressions of Reich's later work, which is to say, those who support Reich's findings on the emotional plague within socialism and communism. He chronically tries to misportray American orgonomy as something "right-wing" as does Carlinsky's helper Trettin of Germany. A cursory review of their emails, webpages and essays quickly shows this to be so. Carlinsky also has published at least one "Reichian" article in an extreme pornographic publication. Further, what is detailed below shows, beyond doubt, that Carlinsky works very closely with the same CSICOP skeptic people who have their roots in old-line Stalinism. In fact, he is far closer to CSICOP and the organized anti-Reich "skeptics" than he is to Reich and orgonomy, even though he constantly dresses himself up as a Reich-supporter.
My Research
My own work speaks for itself, in my publications which are listed and cited here:
https://orgonelab.academia.edu/JamesDeMeo
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_DeMeo/contributions
http://www.orgonelab.org/demeopubs.htm
I've already undertaken a separate rebuttal of a few of Carlinsky's more studied disinformation articles attacking my work, and the attack which Carlinsky helped engineer in Skeptical Inquirer by Martin Gardner, here:
http://www.orgonelab.org/orgpedresp.htm
http://www.orgonelab.org/skepticmag.htm
http://www.orgonelab.org/gardner.htm
Since the attacks directed against me have been in regards to my cloudbusting research, it would be best for the interested reader to review what I've already published on the question, which addresses with solid documentation the results of those cloudbuster field operations. An introduction to this part of my research can be found at the following website, which also has links to my papers published on-line, as well as to citation lists:
http://www.orgonelab.org/PressRelease2.htm
As documented in my publications, through a careful application of Reich's original methods of cloudbusting, many severe and killing droughts were ended, including a 3-year drought in Israel, a 12-year drought in Southern Africa, and a 30-year drought in the East African Sahel, among others. A harsh 1986 drought in the SE USA was ended by a team I led into the region, and the severe Midwestern drought and Pacific NW drought of 1988, which ended with the "surprise snowstorm" at Yellowstone Park, similarly benefited from cloudbusting work I organized and carried out. Likewise a severe drought in California in 1991 was terminated by the "Miracle March" rains which no weather forecaster had seen coming until after the cloudbusting work had started.
Those droughts had created deadly conditions, with massive economic and environmental damage, and much human suffering. In the African projects, starvation or near-starvation conditions existed across large regions prior to our work, with the landscape parched and burning up. The results were eye-opening in every case, with the quick return of widespread, saturating and cyclical, natural rains, persisting over months or years thereafter without any further need for cloudbusting work. I got a lot of help in these projects, from concerned and equally dedicated people who also have been smeared and attacked by Carlinsky and his friends. The published body of work on this drought question stands as a powerful scientific support and verification for Reich's own claims and discovery, and THIS is the reason why Carlinsky and the organized "skeptics" have been so vicious and aggressive in their attacks.
Consequently, my work stands on its own merits, and aside from the items noted above, requires no defense against Carlinsky's attacks. However, I will provide information about Carlinsky's own published works, his deeds and relationships with the organized "skeptics" of CSICOP, which few people know about and which have escaped notice and been buried in my own archives for too long.
Joel Carlinsky's Early Years in Orgonomy: Burglary, Hate, Intimidation, Provocations
Burglary of the Reich Museum
Carlinsky wishes to portray himself as a long-time "friend of Reich" with some deep insights into orgonomy. Of course, he shames anyone who dares to bring up his burglary of the Reich Museum years ago, and his conviction and prison-time for that offence, suggesting he undertook the burglary for "higher motivations", to dig out information from the Reich archives which might "save the world". I don't buy that for a minute. The fact is, he was caught only because he tried to sell the stolen Reich items for a cool $5000 bucks, plus being caught with stolen credit cards, a forged driver's license and multiple unused airplane tickets. This is quite a bit more than the heroic "rescue" of socially-important archival materials from the Reich Museum, as he continually misportrays the burglary.(see: Wilhelm Reich Museum Newsletter, #8, Fall 1980, and Van Haintze, Bill & Finder, Alan: "An Attempt to Save the World", Newsday, 2 Oct. 1980, p.3 & 25). And how does a guy who often presents himself as something of a homeless bum, living from his back-pack, wind up with multiple airline tickets? Or the "wads of cash" one of his friends informed me about.
My First Contact with Carlinsky
The first time I met Carlinsky was when he showed up on my doorstep in Lawrence, Kansas, when I was undertaking a study of Reich's biophysics and specifically the cloudbuster as part of my graduate-level research program through the Geography-Meteorology Department at the University of Kansas. He introduced himself as "Dave Shaw", which I knew to be a phony name. Previously I learned about Carlinsky when working with Dr. Richard Blasband as lab assistant at the American College of Orgonomy's (ACO) Elsworth Baker Laboratory in Bucks County, PA. He had been pestering the ACO physicians at that time, and somehow learned of my work at the University of Kansas. Upon confronting him about it, he confessed to being Carlinsky, but nevertheless pestered me with questions, about who was doing what in orgonomy, especially cloudbusting, and tried to recruit me to work with him on wild cloudbuster schemes, to "grab the headlines" and "prove to the world" that Reich was correct. I politely refused to work with him, and asked him to leave, but was subjected to weekly telephone calls, always prying for information. Shortly thereafter, I received a letter from him, at the time when he was in jail, awaiting trial for the Museum burglary. He wrote to ask for my help to convince the judge that he had broken into the Museum to "obtain Reich's secrets" which could "save the world". I refused and instead advised him to change his attitude and to "come clean with Ms. Higgins (trustee of the Reich Museum) and the judge" and to later find a good therapist and put his life back into order. That was the second time I had given him such advice. From that point on, his approach to me was fully hostile and threatening.
FBI Agent Provocateur?
Surely, Carlinsky is unrepentant about his burglary of the Reich Museum, just as he denies the facts regarding his getting caught up in an FBI sting operation some years later, which was directed against terror-bombers in radical animal-rights and "environmental" gangs. In that incident, he tried to recruit people to help him "take out every nuclear power plant on the East Coast" shortly after Earth First leader David Foreman had been arrested in a similar scheme, to destroy powerlines from an Arizona nuclear power plant. The Earth Firsters angrily ran Carlinsky off as an FBI agent provocateur, which just might have been true. The whole affair was written up in Animal's Agenda magazine.(Sept. 1989, p.20-21) Predictably, Carlinsky denied everything.
The McCullough Burglary
Carlinsky also apparently burglarized the home of the late Robert McCullough, a man who worked for Reich over many years, taking letters between McCullough and Trevor Constable, which he later photocopied and distributed to embarrass Constable -- Carlinsky is very self-righteous about that incident, as if the ends of exposing Constable's Steinerian mysticism justified the means of theft. Carlinsky delivered copies of the stolen letters to the late Jerome Eden in 1972, who then transferred them to Elsworth Baker of the ACO, triggering the ACO to break off cooperative work with Constable. However, McCullough was properly outraged about his private letters being stolen from his home in a burglary, as was Constable, and factually those letters showed up in Carlinsky's hands. How was this, unless Carlinsky committed the crime?
McCullough also threaten to file criminal charges against Eden for possession of stolen property (Eden did not know how Carlinsky obtained the letters), and additional angry letters from all involved went back and forth. Carlinsky appeared happy about the turmoil he created, like a monkey throwing matches in a fireworks factory. But the fact is, without any help from Carlinsky, Constable exposed his Steinerian mysticism and abandonment of orgonomy in his 1976 book The Cosmic Pulse of Life (Merlin Press, Santa Ana, CA). Carlinsky's provocation was unnecessary. But Carlinsky made additional, more dangerous provocations against Eden.
Contaminating the Eden home with Radioactivity
By Eden's report, on one of his visits, Carlinsky deliberately exposed Jerome and Desire Eden to radioactive materials "to test their sensitivity to oranur". When finally learning of the source of his and his wife's ill feelings -- they were very sensitive to oranur, in fact -- Eden ran Carlinsky off. Some years later Desire Eden died of cancer. One can only wonder about the malignant irresponsibility of someone who would do such a thing.
Details about the McCullough burglary and Constable letters, and the incident with Carlinsky's radioactivity were revealed and documented with photocopies of the correspondence in Eden's writings. (CORE Manual, Eden press, p.30-31, 1986; Sincerely, Elsworth Baker: The Correspondence of Elsworth F. Baker and Jerome Eden, Eden Press 1988, p.101)
The Blasband Burglary, FDA snooping, and ACO Bomb-Threat
Around the same time as the McCullough burglary, someone burglarized the home and lab facility of Dr. Richard Blasband of the American College of Orgonomy (ACO). He suspected it might be Carlinsky, but could never prove who did it. Some years later, when Carlinsky made his first contacts with me, he admitted on the telephone to committing that criminal act, something which I recently learned he also confessed to Dr. Courtney Baker on the telephone. Carlinsky actually sent copies of some of the stolen Blasband documents to third parties, trying to stir up trouble, just as he previously did in sending materials to Eden which were stolen from McCullough. It is therefore interesting to learn, in the light of the Reich Museum burglary, and the burglary of McCullough's home for which clear documentation is available, that Carlinsky has admitted on the OML to having spied upon the home of Edward Pell of the ACO "when he was not at home" (Carlinsky email to the OML, on "American College of Orgonomy and the CIA", 17 May 2005). Maybe Carlinsky knows who issued the bomb threat against the ACO facility in Princeton around that time? Or the incident when FDA agents came snooping around the offices of New York orgonomists in the 1970s, looking for evidence that the orgone accumulator was being used, endangering those physicians. Maybe Carlinsky will tell everyone what he knows about those crimes, as well as the Blasband burglary? And was Pell's home broken into at that time when Carlinsky admits to "casing" it? I also learned from a reliable source that, during this same period, Peter Reich (son of Wilhelm Reich) came home one day to find the uninvited Carlinsky sitting in his living room (and promptly told him to depart)! For a fact, Carlinsky showed up uninvited and unannounced on my doorstep, and later threatened me with burglary or worse on the telephone during my student days at Kansas, after I refused to help him cook up an outrageous "reason" for his burglary of the Reich Museum. His typical threatening phone call would rant: "Tell me what you know about cloudbusting, and who is doing cloudbusting, or I'll come to your house and steal the information". Years later, he verbally threatened "to assassinate DeMeo" to a third party, who wrote me an affidavit letter about it, prompting my contact with the sheriff's office in California, and later in Oregon. (Letter, from E. Gehrman to J. DeMeo, 1991) This letter also quoted Carlinsky as saying he "was doing everything in his power to discredit Reich".
Carlinsky's Published Writings Attacking American Orgonomy, and Wilhelm Reich
Let's review what Carlinsky has written, or helped others to write, which is exceedingly well-documented. For the record, what I reveal below is only a portion of what is in my files.
Regarding his June 2005 email on the "OML", it is true, Carlinsky never published anything under his own name in the main CSICOP publication Skeptical Inquirer , but he certainly has used pseudonyms over the years -- Kirby Thwing, Alice Earl, Dave Shaw and Steve Aaron among a few -- so there might be something by him in Skeptical Inquirer which we cannot identify. But we need not wonder, as Carlinsky published several anti-Reich missives under his own name in various "skeptic group" publications.
The New York Skeptic Smear Article
In the New York Skeptic newsletter of Fall 1990, Carlinsky's article "Orgonomy in New Jersey" basically trashed the ACO and orgonomy in general, and issued a call for FDA-type investigation, just as Mildred Brady had done years earlier against Reich. In the article he concluded:
Writing Smears for Peer Advocate
Only a few years earlier, he wrote a similar article in the anti-psychiatry Peer Advocate newsletter (May 1988) under false name, nastily denouncing "...crackpot doctors living in their make-believe world of DOR-busters (DOR = Deadly Orgonomic Radiation) and other psychiatric fantasies."
I learned of both of these articles because Carlinsky sent me copies, unsolicited, in the manner of a proud author.
Article in an Unidentified "Skeptic" Newsletter
One of Carlinsky's more polished articles "(Or)gone But Not Forgotten: The legacy of Wilhelm Reich Lives On in his Modern Followers", was mailed to me (by Carlinsky) but the photocopy failed to reproduce the publisher's information -- the content reeked with contempt for Reich and openly ridiculed his discoveries:
The article, which was published in 1996, went on to mostly attack myself, also ridiculing the issue of desert-spreading as a serious world problem, as well as my work on Saharasia and the whole subject of cloudbusting. Others in American orgonomy were also maliciously smeared. While this article probably had only very limited exposure, it appears to have stimulated a more widely-circulated attack by journalist Kurt Blumenau, who wrote an article of identical title and ridiculing tone for the Milford Daily News in New Jersey.(3 Nov. 2002)
http://farshores.org/p02org.htm
Carlinsky Introduces Reich into a Sleazy Pornographic Newspaper: Eidos: Everybody Is Doing Outrageous Sex
He also wrote a spoof article "Orgone Therapy and Mind Control: Right-Wing Cult or CIA Front" for a Boston pornographic newspaper Eidos (Vol.8, No.3, Winter 1995, p.27) and dressed it up with a photograph of his bare buttocks, with pants down, bending over and spreading his cheeks for a glaring anus-photograph. On the pages of that issue of Eidos were ads for dildos, "sex-toys", and other pornographic paraphernalia, making derogatory commentary about Wilhelm Reich, as if Reich would approve of rancid pornography. Other parts of that issue were suggestive of pedophilia advocacy. Again, I got a copy of it unsolicited from Carlinsky, the proud author.
Carlinsky and Morrock, in Skeptic Magazine
Carlinsky also proudly points to his one article in Skeptic magazine (Vol.2, No.3, 1994) as "not attacking Reich", which is a half-truth at best. He attacks nearly everyone else in American orgonomy except Reich, but let's not quibble and grant him that one point, that for this one article he does not "attack Reich"... at least not directly. The article title was fully unfriendly to Reich: "Epigones of Orgonomy: The Incredible History of Wilhelm Reich and his Followers" and the article itself carried a similar derogatory tone, primarily denouncing everyone in American orgonomy, but "merely" implying Reich was a ridiculous or irrelevant person. Here are some quotes from the article:
And so on the article goes, throwing contempt and ridicule upon Reich's sex-economic, therapeutic, and orgone biophysical findings, with entire lists of outright lies and misrepresentations. Reich's American followers were thereby tarnished by Carlinsky as nut-cases and frauds, precisely because they followed in Reich's track, and not as he often lies about, because they purportedly "deviated" from Reich. The article otherwise says nothing of substance which might be construed to support Reich. One does not have to know calculus to figure the same nasty ideas thrown at the "epigones of orgonomy" refer to Reich as well, though Carlinsky is clear enough at many points in the article to reveal his contempt for Reich.
Carlinsky's associate Richard Morrock authored another article on Reich in that same issue of Skeptic which also expressed a contempt for Reich -- it was titled: "Pseudo-Psychotherapy: UFOs, Cloudbusters, Conspiracies and Paranoia in Wilhelm Reich's Psychotherapy". Morrock used a toned-down and possibly more effective approach to present a highly sensationalized and ridiculous misportrayal of orgonomy, as some kind of belief-system involving spontaneous generation, UFOs, space-guns, and bizarre therapy methods. Not one single point of Reich's science was accurately represented by either writer. Together they trounced their straw-man "Wilhelm Reich" and the "epigones" they had fabricated into the dirt. My rebuttal to the Carlinsky-Morrock articles in Skeptic is found here:
http://www.orgonelab.org/skepticmag.htm
Plotting an Anti-Orgonomy Book
And if one nourishes the illusion that Carlinsky and Morrock just "coincidentally" happened to submit articles to Skeptic magazine at the same time, consider this: As early as 1991, when Morrock published a derogatory report about the ACO in Skeptical Inquirer, he and Carlinsky had jointly planned a book, The Emperor's New Clothes: The College of Orgonomy and the Cult of Wilhelm Reich, for "Prometheus Press" (sic). The flyer which I received (from guess who) probably meant the "Prometheus Books" of Paul Kurtz, editor and publisher of Skeptical Inquirer . That's where all the big-time "skeptics" who are buddies with the FDA and AMA publish their books, and Carlinsky had set his goals to join with them.
Thankfully, that book project never materialized, but both Carlinsky and Morrock continued merrily down the same anti-Reich path. Morrock previously wrote other articles critical of the psychotherapy of Arthur Janov and Stanislov Grof, in Skeptical Inquirer , before he came out publicly as a Carlinsky associate. Later on Morrock wrote a nasty anti-orgonomy, anti-DeMeo article "The World in an Orgone Box", posturing as a book-review of my "Saharasia", which presented my cross-cultural research supporting Reich, and had nothing to do with the "orgone box". (Journal of Psychohistory, 26(4):854-858, Spring 1999.) Thankfully, Skeptic editor Michael Shermer and Psychohistory editor Lloyd DeMause were honest enough to do what Paul Kurtz of Skeptical Inquirer always refused -- to print my rebuttal. (see: "In Defense of Orgonomy", Skeptic, Vol.2, No.4, p.15-17, 1994; and "Shredding Saharasia: A Response to Richard Morrock's 'Review'", Journal of Psychohistory, 26(4):858-863, Spring 1999.) After some continued contact with Carlinsky, Shermer wrote to me what a mistake it was to publish anything by him.
Carlinsky's Unpublished Writings
The Anti-DeMeo and Anti-ACO Smear-Essays and Hate-Mail
Even as Carlinsky has published articles expressing all this hatred against Reich and American orgonomy, he was sending out dozens of round-letters and short essays in the postal mails, denouncing me and others in American orgonomy in the most hard words and smears. He composed nearly a dozen short essays attacking myself and American orgonomy in general, with titles such as:
* Some Serious Concerns About the American College of Orgonomy
* Mad Scientist Screws Up: West Coast Drought Exacerbated by Incompetent Cloudbusting
* Desert Ecosystems Endangered by Weather Engineering Threat
* California Scientist Thinks Government Should Control the Weather... Under His Supervision Of Course
* Committee on Orgonomic Responsibility to the Environment
* Special Bulletin on Environmental Damage Due to Misuse of Cloudbusting
* People in Middle East Massacred by Israeli-American Research Project on Weather Control
These smear-essays postured Carlinsky as a "concerned citizen" "sympathetic to Reich" who was merely doing his duty to inform the public, and targeted me and others in American orgonomy with character assassination and total distortions of our work. He did so, at the same time he was circulating solicitations for financial support to his "Blue Sky Research & Development" cloudbusting company. (See the advertisement in Electric Spacecraft Journal, Jan-Feb-Mar 1991, Asheville, NC, p.43.)
These smear-essays were mailed far and wide, often with hateful and threatening cover letters, to nearly everyone who had ever offered small help and support for my work, including to my university employers, and to editors of journals who published my research papers. They were also sent to virtually every orgonomic research institute and independent researcher around the world, and to others completely outside of orgonomy, including to my family members, friends, and neighbors.
More Hate Mail, Telephone Threats & Dirty Tricks
Through unsolicited letters and phone calls, Carlinsky threatened to come burglarize my home, to report me to the FDA, the IRS, FBI and other government agencies, and to kill me if my work was ever accepted by the scientific establishment. He additionally obtained one of the fundraising letters from my institute, the Orgone Biophysical Research Lab (OBRL), and inserted his own crazy words to make me appear ridiculous, circulating it. He also took my published paper on the important cloudbusting experiments undertaken in 1989 in Arizona, and forged his own name to it, sending it out as his own fund-raiser (in a manner reminiscent of Trettin's later misrepresentations of the same Arizona project as something of his own). These actions prompted me to send him a legal warning, to "cease and desist", and to also contact the Sheriff's office in Carlinsky's home town, but my personal circumstances at the time prevented further action.
By the time I moved to Oregon in 1995, and established the OBRL Greensprings Center, Carlinsky had continued with his antics and was confronted by the Oregon police, who correctly classified him as a "stalker". As a two-time felon, a "third strike" in Oregon would put him behind bars for the rest of his life. He's nevertheless sent hate-mail to my neighbors and to local businesses near the OBRL Greensprings Center attempting to stir up trouble, but thankfully everyone was decent enough to spot hate-mail right off, and it generated a lot of sympathy for my situation. If Carlinsky hoped to trigger a local reaction against the Greensprings Center as happened against Reich and Orgonon in the 1950s in Rangeley Maine, he badly miscalculated. His mug-shot is posted at any number of local businesses, with the local Sheriff's telephone number underneath. Perhaps this was overkill, but I don't like people who threaten my loved ones, my friends, my home, or who write such nasty things about Reich, or about me.
Carlinsky's Crazy Confessionals
It is also interesting to note how I learned much of what Carlinsky does, or plans to do. It is because he sends me many unsolicited letters, often with copies of everything to document what he has done. His letters are written in pencil on yellow legal note-pad paper (furnished by the nurses in his ward, one imagines), and the stream of unsolicited letters has often been a monthly or weekly event. At some point, someone donated a computer with a spell-check program to him, and his essays emerged in better form, if certainly not in better spirits. And so for many years, in addition to his hatred and attacks against Reich and American orgonomy, he has also confessed his sins to me in numerous unsolicited letters. He sends me copies of materials which fully document what is stated above, and below, including "thank you" letters from various "skeptics" and organizations who consulted with him regarding their own malicious anti-Reich activities, or who occasionally have invited him to write in their newsletters or speak on their radio programs. In fact, Carlinsky has contributed his "expertise" on Reich (Reich as a quack and fraud) not only to CSICOP and Skeptical Inquirer magazine, but also to the Kansas City Skeptics Society, the New York Skeptics, the San Diego Skeptics and the Iowa Skeptics. In all cases, his words were malicious towards Reich, American orgonomy, and especially myself.
Confessions on Cloudbuster Terrorism
While Carlinsky claims his focus of criticism is my cloudbusting work, denouncing me within orgonomy circles as incompetent or worse, he avoids mention of his own incredible antics with the cloudbuster, including the following confessional rant:
Only a few years earlier, Carlinsky sent me an unsolicited letter with a shocking front-page newspaper article from the Chicago Sun-Times (20 Aug. 1990), with the headline: "Winds of Fury: Joliet area tornadoes kill 20, injure 300". On an attached note, Carlinsky wrote: "Thought you'd like to know what I've been [doing] lately."
These are only two of many similar Carlinsky confessionals in my files, claiming to have deliberately created weather damage with the cloudbuster. Some were accompanied by photos of cloudbusters and newspaper articles documenting the damages, suggesting the confessions were genuine, even if lacking in regret or remorse, being more like the boasting of a crazy man -- "stop me before I do it again"! He made these confessions even as he was stealing my own words from published articles about responsibility in cloudbusting work, and distorting the results of my cloudbusting operations to end severe droughts. While I was accused of being an incompetent cloudbuster operator who had created severe weather damages, in fact this is exactly what his own crazy boastings revealed (sinking ships, making tornadoes, etc.).
Even while "Joel the orgonomic cloudbuster expert" writes on internet about his past cloudbuster exploits, and promotes himself and his "Blue Sky Research" cloudbusting company, and "Joel the environmentalist" writes critical articles using lies and disinformation to condemn DeMeo for claimed weather-damages by incompetent cloudbusting, "Joel the skeptic" writes for the "skeptic" press to misportray Reich as a lunatic and Reich's followers as cultists, and "Joel the terrorist" deliberately creates mass damages and deaths with his own cloudbuster, even as "Joel the FBI agent provocateur" tries to jazz up radical environmentalists to go out and make damage against nuclear power plants. Will the real Joel Carlinsky please stand up?!
Carlinsky's "Orgonomy Peddlers" article, and the Shutdown of the Original OML
Carlinsky's on-going attacks created a truly pestilent situation, harmful to both myself and all of American orgonomy. When I exposed this situation to the original Orgonomy Mailing List as run by Shawn Wilbur of the Spoon Collective back in 1996, friends of Carlinsky posted emails expressing happiness about the situation, calling it "a matter of high humor". They laughed to hear about all the attacks and smears, essentially spitting in my face and supporting Carlinksy. All that destructive hatred directed against American orgonomy, and myself, was perfectly OK with them. I am sure, they would have said exactly the same thing, to laugh at and spit in Reich's face as well, had they lived during the time of the smears against him by Mildred Brady and Martin Gardner.
Apparently feeling in high spirits, Carlinsky then issued one of his more studied smear articles, "Orgonomy Peddlers, Cloudbusting and the Environment", which additionally branded me a mass-murderer via irresponsible cloudbusting, attacking others as well, and which tried to re-cast himself as a "concerned Reichian environmentalist". The article was false and lying from beginning to end. The only small truthful parts were where he successfully took the sentiment from some of my own writings about the need for caution and responsibility in cloudbusting. For example, my article "So, You Want to Build a Cloudbuster? On the Problem of Growing Interest in Cloudbusting" was circulated privately as a letter in the early 1980s, and published as a small booklet in 1989.
http://www.orgonelab.org/sobuildaclb.htm
A German translation of it appeared shortly afterward in the journal Emotion (9:14-44, 1989). Another of my articles "Cloudbusting is Not 'Weather Modification'" appeared in Pulse of the Planet (#4:114-116) in 1993. These publications were well before the 1995 appearance of Carlinsky's "Orgonomy Peddlers" article, which tried to tarnish me as someone who was negligent and unconcerned about such issues. Nevertheless, in the "Orgonomy Peddlers" article, by fabricating severe weather damages which did not happen, or which were fully unrelated to the cloudbusting projects being criticized, and by basically repeating my own words of caution about responsibility in cloudbusting work, Carlinsky created a totally false image of me, and of himself. It was a masterful bit of disinformation, which I could not simply ignore. Shortly afterward I wrote a detailed "Response to the 'Orgonomy Peddlers' Article" which pointed out its many falsehoods, and also partly exposed Carlinsky's past offences against Reich and orgonomy. My "Response" was also posted to the OML, and is now here:
http://www.orgonelab.org/orgpedresp.htm
Carlinsky's "Orgonomy Peddler's" article attracted much attention among persons who knew nothing about either Carlinsky or myself, and also spurred the Reich-haters and DeMeo-haters into vocal action on the OML. The article was quickly reposted to Jamerling Ogg's PORE website, and later to the Keeleynet Website, where distortions of Reich's work are abundant in any case.
After my "Response" article was circulated on the OML, Ogg finally removed the Carlinsky article from his PORE website, but it remains on Keeleynet to this day, being considered "excellent" by webmasters Jerry Decker and Chuck Henderson. Carlinsky gave his "thank you" to Ogg, for the early exposure given to "Orgonomy Peddlers" by praising and linking to the PORE website at the end of his article. The larger issue that the article was a total lie, and the history of provocations and anti-Reich publications by the same author, were all swept aside as irrelevant by Carlinsky's supporters. The over-arching impulse appeared to be to stick a dagger into the heart of those who were following up on Reich's discoveries in an authentic and scientific manner. The "Orgonomy Peddler's" article was finally reprinted in the ridiculous magazine Paranoia (Vol. #13, 1996), a back-alley tabloid specializing in fully outrageous and comical conspiracy theory.
Jim Martin and Kenn Thomas -- both professional researchers and writers with a strong devotion to fact, and to Reich, and with their own small publications (Flatland and Steamshovel magazines, respectively) -- were also members of the original OML at that time and so got a front-row seat of the incredible emotional plague chain-reaction which Carlinsky triggered. They wrote their own article on the affair, "Joel Carlinsky's Bonfire of Insanity", which was published in their magazines, and also is internet posted:
http://www.orgonelab.org/carlinsky.htm
Here's a pertinent quote from the Martin-Thomas article:
To this date, not one public retraction, apology, expression of error or clear statement against Carlinsky's behavior has come from any of these individuals who allied themselves with him in the mid-1990s. They mostly continue with this alliance, or "axis of disinformation". After writing my "Response" article I quit the OML, as did virtually every remaining professional individual. With some understandable displeasure, the webmaster Wilbur eventually shut down the list as it degenerated into a cult of hatred and name-calling against orgonomic professionals -- myself primarily. About a year later, Ogg resurrected a new Orgonomy Mailing List at Yahoo groups, but slowly it has degenerated once again into a vehicle for invective against American orgonomy. Verbal sniper attacks by Ogg appeared on the PORE website and OML over years, directed against me, Theirrie Cook, Jim Martin, and others who maintained good working relationships with me. Later, the snipes were supplemented on the OML with complaints and distortions from Trettin claiming how others had taken "his" orgone accumulator construction plans, or failed to acknolwedge him as an orgonomic authority. And finally Carlinsky appeared as a semi-permanent feature, issuing a stream of lies and half-truths critically attacking nearly everyone in American orgonomy, but of course with little or no effort made by the moderators of those internet lists and websites to block such maliciousness, nor to hold people accountable for their off-list statements and behavior, nor to solicit the response of those who were targeted with mud-throwing. Today, the flow of disinformation and attacks on the Trettin WR-Liste and Orgonstar websites is non-stop. Long before the present situation of degeneracy on the WR-Liste of Trettin, or on the OML, their sniping and malicious words got so bad that I finally wrote up clear statements exposing critical facts, and posted them to the OBRL website.
http://www.orgonelab.org/oggpore.htm
http://www.orgonelab.org/trettin.htm
Hate-Mail and Provocations within Professional Circles
Lest the reader think Carlinsky's malicious attacks are only focused upon issues of cloudbusting, he is also full of hatred against Reich's sex-economic and therapeutic discoveries. In many places, his own emails make this fully clear. But he does far more than merely express his opinion. For example, whenever I go to speak at an academic conference on sex-economic subjects -- such as the dangers and trauma of genital mutilations, or the early peaceful cultures -- Carlinsky sends the conference organizers a stream of hate-mail about me, threatening them if they don't break off contact with me, attempting to have me kicked off the schedule. He did this several times to Marilyn Milos of the NOCIRC organization, who invited me to speak about my findings on the historical geography of male and female genital mutilations. Also, Dr. Gottner-Abendroth who invited me to speak at the Congress on Matriarchal Studies, received an entire raft of hate-mail, as did Dr. Hassapi in Greece, when I was invited by them to give lectures or seminars on orgonomy. It was all transparent and ridiculous, and promptly thrown into the wastebasket by everyone -- though I was informed with copies of everything, which went into my files.
Likewise, nearly everyone who has accepted an invitation to speak at my Greensprings Center has got Carlinsky missives and threats in their mail-box. In all cases but one -- a university professor who just got a new appointment and was fearful Carlinsky might target him with the same kind of abuse and dirty-tricks -- everyone basically ignored him or told him to "buzz off", and that was the end of it. This has gone on since the 1980s, in fact. And it has become something of a joke among professionals in American orgonomy, that if you have not received hate-mail from Joel Carlinsky, you must not be doing anything really serious or worthwhile! My file of such ranting letters is quite large by now, and while nobody with a professional background takes Carlinsky's hate-mail seriously, it would be an error to consider him "harmless" or having no influence.
Wrecking a Planned AAAS Symposium Sympathetic to Reich and Orgonomy
In early 1994, I attempted to organize a special Symposium on "Wilhelm Reich's Discoveries: A Scientific Re-Appraisal", as part of an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, publisher of Science magazine) Conference being held in San Francisco. The planned AAAS Symposium in San Francisco would have brought together a dozen Ph.D. and M.D. scientists from North America and Europe to speak about their work corroborating Reich, at one of the largest annual scientific conferences being held in the USA. Somehow, Carlinsky learned of the planned Symposium and cooperated with an academic member of the San Diego Skeptics Society who was on the AAAS review committee, to organize a malicious opposition to the event. Various smear articles, such as by Martin Gardner and by Carlinsky himself, attacking the research and credentials of the presenters, were introduced into the "review" process. I was informed by Dr. John Chappell, who had conversations with the review committe, of accusations that "Reich and DeMeo are antisemites", something which he immediately defended me against, but to no affect. Such accusations were transparently false (Reich was of Jewish background and wrote extensively against the Nazis, and I've authored various articles with anti-fascist content analyzing and opposing antisemitism) but it nevertheless revealed the unscientific and unethical nature of the "review" underway, as influenced by Carlinsky and his "skeptic" friends. Pre-existing prejudices against Reich were thereby amplified into a major controversy, and the Symposium was cancelled. Here's part of a damning letter from Robert Bowman of the AAAS (and the San Diego Skeptics group) to Carlinsky:
With his usual gloating, Carlinsky sent me a copy of this letter, with the note: "Thought you might like to see this to prove I'm still on your case." On "Reich's case" would be more accurate, as the repercussions for the Symposium cancellation had affects far beyond only myself. Carlinsky concluded his note to me:
Plotting Smears with the Weather Modification Association
In a similar vein, some years earlier Carlinsky made contacts with the US Weather Modification Association, an influential trade organization devoted to cloud-seeding which includes as members all the major cloudseeding companies, and which publishes the Journal of Weather Modification. Carlinsky persuaded this group, which was never friendly to Reich's atmospheric work, into taking an official stand against cloudbusting. At their annual conference, a paper was planned for presentation on "The Orgone Question" by their president T.J. Henderson, in which I was apparently to be denounced and cloudbusting declared a fraud. Fortunately, I heard about that event before it happened (from a Carlinsky "confessional" letter!) and was able to head off the attack with a strongly-worded letter to Henderson and their executive committee. (Letter from DeMeo to Henderson and WMA, May 1991). Henderson subsequently wrote back to me, denying much but confirming his receipt of various materials sent to him by Carlinsky.
Plotting Smears with the False Memory Foundation
Carlinsky also sent some kind of smears against Reich to the False Memory Foundation (FMF), which publishes and does legal work on the issue of family incest, or false accusations of the same. The Executive Director of the FMF wrote to Carlinsky saying: "Dear Joel, Fantastic! The blockages of the orgone circulation caused by sexual repression! I'm sure that we can do something with it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.... /S/ Pamela Freyd" (d.29 Jan.1994) Carlinsky proudly sent me a copy of Dr. Freyd's letter, with his attached note saying "Thought you might like another peek at my mail -- just to show you I'm still on your case and working hard to discredit orgonomy." His goal here was obvious, to trigger some kind of published attack against Reich by yet another organization, this time by one devoted to serious sexual issues.
Carlinsky the CSICOP Informer and "Reichian" Consultant
More to the point of his current Celebrity status on the OML and Trettin websites, and as mentioned previously, Carlinsky is an informer to the organized skeptic groups. He makes friends with people in orgonomy, asks a lot of questions, gathers information, keeps tabs on "who is doing what" and then sends the more important findings to his buddies in the organized skeptic network, who write more polished and destructive attacks against Reich and orgonomy. He is considered the "resident expert on Reich" among various skeptic authors who write for the CSICOP network, and they appear to regularly consult with him whenever they have something nasty to say about Reich, or against a living scientist or medical doctor who takes Reich seriously, and works with Reich's ideas openly and productively.
Helping CSICOP's Martin Gardner Smear Reich and Orgonomy for Skeptical Inquirer magazine
Carlinsky cooperated over many years with Martin Gardner who wrote terrible things about Reich and orgonomy in his Skeptical Inquirer article "Reich the Rainmaker: The Orgone Obsession" (Vol.13, p.26-30, 1988), actually sending Gardner copies of my published articles on cloudbusting, which Gardner then abused in the writing of his distortions. My rebuttal article was refused by Skeptical Inquirer which unethically never prints rebuttals by persons attacked in its pages, but the rebuttal was made public in our own journal Pulse of the Planet and now is on internet:
http://www.orgonelab.org/gardner.htm
And of course we know well about Gardner's hateful anti-Reich writings from the 1950s ("The Hermit Scientist", Antioch Review, winter 1950-1951; chapter on "Orgonomy" in In The Name of Science -- later titled Fads and Fallacies In the Name of Science, Dover, NY 1952). Gardner then acted as match-provider and cheerleader for the burning of Reich's books, and when Reich was hauled off to prison. None of this mattered to Carlinsky, however, who became friends with Gardner. The Martin-Thomas article on Carlinsky summarized the situation aptly:
(See the original article for the citations http://www.orgonelab.org/carlinsky.htm )
Helping CSICOP's Patterson: Orgonomy Smeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association
Carlinsky also had contacts with, and appears to have stimulated skeptic-author John Patterson, a professor at the University of Iowa and CSICOP Consultant, to undertake smears of Reich and orgonomy which subsequently appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) an ultra-orthodox medical journal which also played a role in Reich's destruction. Patterson wrote to me about cloudbusting when I was teaching at the University of Northern Iowa, unaware that I knew of his connections with CSICOP. When I confronted him about it, he admitted to this, but he also volunteered information about his connections with Carlinsky. An article denouncing my cloudbusting work subsequently appeared in the Iowa Skeptic's Newsletter, and Patterson thereafter wrote a letter for JAMA (2 Oct. 1991, p.1772) which condemned homeopathy, naturopathy, and orgonomy. The same Journal had previously run two anonymous articles attacking Ayur-Veda therapy, which also included derogatory notes about orgonomy and orgone therapy. And of course, JAMA repeated the Brady smears against Reich and the orgone accumulator years ago (139(2):96-97, 8 January 1949) and is a well known source of disinformation about natural healing methods in general, as is CSICOP and Skeptical Inquirer . Here, again, we see the co-joining of methods and motivations by the CSICOP Stalinists and the AMA-FDA-pharmaceutical interests.
Helping CSICOP's R. Baker: Reich & Orgonomy Smeared in a book
When skeptic author Robert Baker included a chapter dismissing and distorting Reich's work and American orgonomy in his book Mind Games: Are We Obsessed With Therapy, he relied upon Carlinsky for "information" and actually cited Carlinsky by name (p.410-411). He also reproduced a paragraph written by Carlinsky which attacked the ACO. The book was published by the CSICOP-related Prometheus Books (1996).
Helping CSICOP's J. Raso: Reich & Orgonomy Smeared in Another Book
When skeptic author Jack Raso wrote his Dictionary of Metaphysical Healthcare: Alternative Medicine, Paranormal Healing, and Related Methods (Council Against Health Fraud 1996), he also consulted with Carlinsky. This book contains malicious and distorted sections on "Orgone Therapy", "Reich Blood Test", "Reichian Breathwork" and "Reichian Therapy". Here is an example of what Raso wrote, through the "consultation" with Carlinsky:
(The Raso "Dictionary" was also webposted by "Quack-Watch": http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/dictionary/md00.html )
Carlinsky actually sent me photocopies of pages from the above books, upon which "thank you" notes were written from authors Baker and Raso to Carlinsky. Raso wrote: "Joel, I was going to call you shortly after we conversed, but I discovered I didn't have your number..." (Raso letter to Carlinsky, Early 1996). In sending copies of that material to me, Carlinsky included his own note saying:
Carlinsky Works to Publicly Link Reich and Cloudbusting to the Oklahoma City Terror Bombing
In early 1996, Carlinsky's article "Strange Science on the Far Right: Militias' far-out beliefs go beyond the political" appeared in an unidentified skeptic's group newsletter -- a poor photocopy which carried no publisher's reference was sent to me by Carlinsky, in another of his "confessionals". The article repeated the rumor of a cloudbuster being used by James Nichols (brother of Terry Nichols, one of the co-conspirators of the Oklahoma City terror bombing), and then went on to tarnish everyone who has supported Reich's work as some kind of right-wing terror-sympathizing kook. Carlinsky's letter, sent with the article, referenced an ABC Television News Special Report dated 11 April 1996, in which he claimed cloudbusters and radionics devices had been identified at the James Nichols farm, calling them "pseudo-science". A nearly-simultaneous hateful article, ranting against Reich and American orgonomy, appeared in Skeptical Inquirer (March 1996) which openly gave credit to Carlinsky for providing the derogatory ammunition:
This awful rumor about a cloudbuster on the Nichol's farm was also repeated in the book All-American Monster: The Unauthorized Biography of Timothy McVeigh by Brandon Stickney, published by the CSICOP-related Prometheus Books (c.1996, on pages 91-92). Carlinsky sent a photocopy of this book's entry to me, in a gloating manner, with a hand-written note saying:
The reference here is, of course, to the scandalous attack upon the Branch Dravidian religious cult's headquarters in Waco, Texas by out-of-control agents of the US government "Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms" during the Clinton administration, where numerous people, including women and children died horribly. When I exposed the above facts about Carlinsky's attacks and threats on the original Orgonomy Mailing List of Shawn Wilbur back in 1996, I thereafter received additional hate-mail from Carlinsky, including the following two incredible rants:
"It is long past time that an organization should have been formed and a regular periodical started specifically to oppose the Reichian movement and its pernicious power. A magazine devoted to opposing Reichian views would serve an inestimable public service and might help to rescue many from the clutches of the Reichian cultists who threaten us with a new dark age of irrationality."
And so on... and so on...
While Carlinsky often likes to misportray his confessional letters to me as "provocative spoofs", in all the above cases, as with his various articles in the "skeptic" press, his "spoofs" centrally contributed to a total smearing of Reich's name and work in widely-read publications.
There are other incidents which could be mentioned -- provocations, threat-letters, hate-mail and awful incidents undertaken by various "skeptic" types, including those already mentioned above, to attack and smear Wilhelm Reich's name, and all of orgonomy, and especially directed against me and my good friends and associates -- but this article is already too long, and the major points have been covered.
Conclusions
From the above, the following conclusions are clear and well-documented:
1. Carlinsky frequently writes nasty articles attacking Reich and orgonomy in total.
2. He further acts as consultant for the CSICOP skeptics to generate even more hateful articles attacking all of Reich and orgonomy.
3. He has never restricted his attacks to only myself or even only to just the American College of Orgonomy, or only to American orgonomy.
4. He furthermore acts as agent provocateur to major scientific groups, exploiting existing anxieties and dislikes of Reich, especially by academic "skeptic" types, thereby multiplying his destructive actions.
5. Carlinsky's attacks and hatred are directed against Reich and orgonomy in total! He has furthermore acted to disrupt, sometimes successfully, working projects where Reich's findings were being applied by scientific professionals.
Knowing all of what's detailed above, it becomes really stunning and appalling, to see Jamerling Ogg and John Trettin -- who openly boast of an appreciation for Reich, and who factually DO have some honest history of genuine helpful work in orgonomy -- give Carlinsky such uncritical openness and assistance, allowing him unrestricted space on their e-lists and websites either for irrelevant "chit-chat" which fully ignores his history, or worse, to spread his lies and poison, which has been exceedingly harmful to many persons, including to the overall social reception of orgonomy.
Nearly everything Carlinsky says is a lie, or a half-truth at best, and of course lies of omission are abundant -- these are exactly the same tactics used against Reich and orgonomy by the organized skeptics, and the similarities are no accident. Unfortunately, Carlinsky is given carte blanche approval to post whatever poison he wants, onto two major internet websites which claim a loyalty to Reich and orgonomy. Why is this?
Years ago, I informed Ogg and Trettin about the worst of Carlinsky's actions, sending them copies of Carlinsky's own smear-attack letters, his insane confessional letters, and even documentation on Carlinsky's threats against me and my wife, his criminal activities, his alliances with the same "skeptic" people who destroyed Reich, and so on. To my stunned amazement, Mr. Ogg, who cooperated with Carlinsky as early as 1996 ignored it all, and in fact increased his cooperation with Carlinsky, in apparent alliance to destroy me personally, to destroy my work utterly. Mr. Trettin came under Carlinsky's persuasion much later, only in 2004, but this was years after he began attacking me in round-letters and sniping on the OML, misrepresenting a working project we had cooperated on in Germany, and posting photos and videos from my "OROP Arizona" project to his websites, without noting just where those photos and videos came from. When I made a public clarification of the facts, the attacks amplified, and Carlinsky appeared. It did not appear to matter to them, that Carlinsky had such a history of malicious distortion in his published attacks against Reich, or in his criminal activities and threats against working scientists and physicians in American orgonomy, or his cooperation with the CSICOP "skeptics". Truth meant nothing. Documentation meant nothing. Fact meant nothing. Threats and criminal acts against people's homes and lives meant nothing. What mattered only was "everyone has a right to be heard", thereby disgracing Reich's own emphasis to just the opposite, that the lie should not be given the same rights as the truth.
The incidents and publications listed above speak for themselves. Carlinsky's efforts appear aimed at isolating and destroying those scientists and physicians who do serious work following up on Reich's findings, by fomenting dissention between those who would, without his disinformation, be naturally allied with them in common cause, towards the growth of public knowledge about authentic orgonomy, and research into, or responsible public application of Reich's findings. Or, Carlinsky seeks to trigger a larger social and governmental reaction against American orgonomy today as happened during Reich's lifetime. These are classic tactics of the emotional plague, and Reich has already written extensively on the subject. I repeat below some of the more essential considerations, with citations, in my essay "The Emotional Plague, and Those Who Assist It: Mechanisms of the Plague", which appears in Part III of my "Response to the Orgonomy Peddlers" article, written some years ago:
http://www.orgonelab.org/orgpedresp.htm
Finally, what has been revealed in this article should be an education for those who previously could not understand why authentic workers in American orgonomy, those who have a great respect for Wilhelm Reich's work and who daily engage in practical applications or investigation into his findings, have historically neither been comfortable with nor tolerant towards Carlinsky and the "skeptics", nor with those "Reichians" who deliberately choose to maintain a close and cooperative relationship with them. Any "friend of Reich" who cannot understand this is simply revealing a contactlessness and will to disbelieve in the face of damning facts.
By my estimation Carlinsky and his "skeptic" friends have perpetrated the worst incidents of emotional plague assault upon orgonomy since the death of Reich, setting back the clock by years, if not decades, and I say this not especially because I was one of the primary targets. The name and research legacy of Wilhelm Reich has suffered most.
(paraphrase from various "orgonomy" websites and mailing lists, where Carlinsky has been greeted with friendly fascination).
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POSTSCRIPT: Extracted From: RESPONSE TO "ORGONOMY PEDDLERS..." ARTICLE
by James DeMeo (1996)
http://www.orgonelab.org/orgpedresp.htm
III. The Emotional Plague, and Those Who Assist It
Mechanism of the Emotional Plague
This entire incident is a good example of what Reich called the emotional plague, whereby the truth is turned upside-down and the most destructive elements of neurotic behavior are embraced by at least a few eagerly susceptible people. The emotional plague character, or pestilent character, lives for the willful deception of the truth, but masquerades their activities as "sympathetic criticism", "revelation" of scandal, "anti-authoritarianism", "free speech", etc. Their real intent, however, is to misrepresent and destroy that which is more alive and freely-moving than themselves. The pestilent character can only succeed in this mission when others help to spread the poison, or when others quietly sit back and say or do nothing in the face of plague behavior. Some of the plague's major weapons against life are gossip and innuendo, usually of a sexual nature, but not always so. But they must select an emotionally-charged issue to be successful. The pestilent character knows that it takes a little bit of truth to catch the interest of the gossip-hungry listener, to which is added some scandal or "dangerous revelation" whereupon anxiety and suspicion are created in the listener about some third party. When done in a group setting, the pestilent character can easily mobilize the latent anger of the group, and direct it towards the third party, who is blamed for all kinds of things. Usually, this third party is some innocent victim whose only crime is to have inadvertently provoked the immobilized structure of the pestilent character.
A person can be an actual functioning plague character who is almost completely blocked genitally. Their energy level is quite high, but due to the blocking are thwarted in their efforts to engage in fulfilling and productive work. More commonly, an individual can be more emotionally mobile, but nevertheless susceptible to temporary infections or flare-ups of plague behavior. It is basically a matter of emotional health, not a term of derision, and should be viewed similar to having the flu or other epidemic disease. One can be temporarily infected, and get over it. Or one can be more deeply infected, constantly infecting others with poisonous ways of emotional living. Generally, plague characters surround themselves with others who are more mobile, capable of actually doing some kind of work, but who are effectively recruited in their work to the goals and directions of the central plague character. There are many social expressions of organized emotional plague, the largest of which are found in organized religion and political movements. But expressions can also appear in much smaller group settings. That is what has in fact occurred in the present instance.
Here are a few additional points about the emotional plague, originally described by Reich.
1) The stated motivations for the actions of the plague are never the real motivations. Usually, the real motivation is 180-degrees opposite to what is stated.
2) No lie is too big for the plague, and the big lie is most effective when concealed under a layer of half-truths.
3) The plague attacks that which give it the most excitement. Like the Grand Inquisitors of the Medieval Church, celibate anti-sex priests all, who tortured and butchered millions of women throughout Europe. Or the contemporary preacher, who thumps the bible with outrage at the thought of young people sleeping together. Or, impotent Communist Party functionaries who never did a full day's work themselves, but only "organized other people's work", upon grabbing political power, moving entire populations of hard-working people from their homes, at the point of a gun, to "re-education camps" in the countryside, "for their own good", whereupon they are over-worked, beaten and starved to death.
4) The plague wants to kill and destroy that which it cannot possibly have for itself, or that which it desires to be, but cannot.
How does the plague accomplish its task? Usually by introducing itself into already-established working situations, and then by introducing slander and gossip which creates turmoil and division. The pestilent character firstly does what is necessary to remove the more functional and independent individuals within its circle of influence. Later, they work their way into positions of power and political authority over the work of others, from where they have an advantage point for an even greater and more widespread destructive influence.
Let's quote Reich, whose descriptions of the plague are so germane to this instance one would think he had written these paragraphs with forethought of this particular situation:
"...the pestilent character enters the public scene as the representative of irrationalism, slander, underhandedness, character assassination, gossip and all other actions which are summarily called Emotional Plague. We know already that the emotional plague has nothing constructive to offer, serves no purpose, and that it satisfies no basic human needs, except those of the emotionally sick. Unfortunately, due to the prevailing biopathic structure of man in general, the emotional plague reigns over the public scene and has succeeded, in its organized form, in bringing human society to the brink of the abyss. ...
"The first thing to note is the way the pestilent character interlopes himself and integrates his irrational activity with the rational set-up: It is what the pioneer, the public at large, and the social administrator have in common with the pestilent character. ...
"The pestilent character is usually a very active, mobile emotional structure; his mobility, however, is short-circuited, as it were, in such a manner that all splendid ideas and good intentions somehow evaporate before they can concentrate enough to produce lasting results. This is a serious work disturbance which gains importance through the fact that the pestilent character most likely will turn out to be an "abortive genius". ...
"If, now, such a character joins a peaceful, hard-working group of people, ... his inner frustrations will sooner or later drive him to do underhanded mischief. ...
"A little slander, well placed, excellently formulated, will, without great effort, kill many an important truth right away in its infancy or it will deprive it of social effectiveness if it had the strength to mature under such social pathology. The public will not act or render any help to the truth. It will remain "sitting" silently and watch helplessly or even gloatingly any crucifixion of innocent souls. ...
"How could such ridiculous nuisance get into this world, in the first place, and how could it, undisturbed, devastate human organizations of work and peace for ages?
"However tough such problems may be to solve, we cannot ever expect to even start solving them unless we free ourselves from the nuisance interference with serious human work exerted by the pestilent character. It is necessary to first achieve a certain amount of safety in doing the job of finding answers to questions of living life."
(W. Reich:"Truth Versus Modju", Orgone Energy Bulletin, 4:162-170, July 1952; also see section on "Emotional Plague" in: W. Reich: Selected Writings, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973, p.467-513; W. Reich, Character Analysis, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1961, p.504-539. W. Reich, The Murder of Christ, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971.)
"Freedom of speech and press are usually and unconsciously being misinterpreted in the sense that irrationalism should have the same freedom of expression as rationalism, and that the lie should have the same freedom of speech as the truth. This misconception of freedom has led the European world [of c.1940] into the disaster because the present human character structure is more afraid of the truth than of the lie, and more inclined to irrational than to rational reactions. If real peace and democracy should have a chance of growth, I believe, a thorough distinction between rational and irrational, truthful and deceitful human action and expression should be made, and that freedom of speech should not be granted to fascist lie and irrationalism, wherever and by whomever it is expressed." (W. Reich, letter to R. Baldwin of the American Civil Liberties Union, 26 July 1948, from "Red Thread of a Conspiracy")
To paraphrase Reich: Why does the Big Lie have so many supporters and hungry listeners, carried forward as in a big parade, while the Truth must come limping behind, on crutches, panting with it tongue out!
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Additional Postscripts
Ever tireless, in March of 2007, Carlinsky created a "Stop DeMeo" e-group at Yahoogroups. A complaint made by James DeMeo to the Yahoo Groups administrators led to cancellation of the new "group", but not before a small gaggle of Carlinsky-fans had joined.
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