Von: Joel Carlinsky
Datum: : Donnerstag, 10. März 2005 18:10
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Recent material posted on his website by Dr. James DeMeo mentions me and includes several serious errors. I address only the small portion of the article which delt with me personally, since most of the article was about John Trettin, who can speak for himself.
First, as far as I know, I have only ONE felony conviction, not two, and that is not for anything I would be ashamed of. Would Dr. DeMeo refer to Wilhelm Reich as a ''convicted felon''? DeMeo is very well aware that many well-known Reichians suported me in the legal case from which that conviction emerged. His conflating a legal conviction with some sort of moral judgement reveals his own authoritarian tendencies and his identification with authority-figures. Next, DeMeo calls me a ''skeptic'' as if that was also something to be ashamed of. I had one article published in Skeptic Magazine. The article was NOT about Wilhelm Reich. It was about James DeMeo and other modern day Reichians. It did not even talk about the issue of the validity of orgone theory. It was not in any way an attack on Reich, who was hardly mentioned in it except for a few introductory paragraphs, or on any of his claims and theories, none of which was the subject. It simply recounted some of the activities of some Reichians. DeMeo has been saying ever since that I am a skeptic, as if to be a skeptic is somehow to be automaticly wrong. Skeptic is a perfectly respectable magazine. I am proud to have been published in a magazine whose contributors include Issac Asimov. Most of the many cults, religions, mysticisms, and scientific claims exposed in its pages are such that DeMeo would also oppose them, and are well deserving of the exposure they receive. Skeptic serves a very usefull purpose and does a good job. It debunks a lot of false claims and non-sensical notions that SHOULD be debunked. In the process, some valid claims, such as Orgone Energy, come in for the same rough treatment, but that does not mean that everything criticised by Skeptic is valid. And it does not mean that criticising claims that one regards as wrong is reprehensible. It just means that sometimes well-meaning people can be mistaken. Next, DeMeo says that I neglected to mention that his cloudbusting work was done under severe drought conditions. That is true for some of his work, but not all. His desert work in Arizona, for example, was planned months in advance, when it would have been impossible to know if more rain would be needed or not by the time of the operation. But I am willing to grant that the breaking of a severe and prolonged drought is not a bad thaing in and of itself. What I criticised him for was the AVOIDABLE side-effects caused by errors which could have been avoided. In that context, the need for rain in the area at the time is not the issue. The issue is, did Dr. DeMeo plan and execute the project carefully and knowlegeably or not? Contrary to what he says, in every instance in which I accused him of responsibility for a weather disaster, I gave my reasons for connecting it to his work, and explained why I thought his cloudbusting had caused the weather which resulted. Those connections were not random. There was always a well-reasoned connection explained in my articles. In the case of the severe storms in Europe, I said that the injection of energy into the jet stream by drawing from the west caused the jet stream to move faster than normal, and that resulted in storms that would usually have petered out by the time they reached Europe hitting Europe at full force. DeMeo does not deny that he was working at the time. He does not deny that he was drawing from the west. He does not deny that a draw from the west would speed up the jet stream. He doser not deny that a faster jet stream would result in North Atlantic gales hitting Europe before they had run out of steam as they usually do by that time. He only says that I just picked a weather disaster at random, which had nothing to do with his work. I was not accusing him of deliberately causeing the storms. I WAS SAYING THAT HE IS SO INCOMPETENT THAT HE CANNOT SEE THE CONNECTION BETWEEN HIS WORK AND ITS RESULTS! Regarding the accusation I made that the California earthquake was due to his work, he does not say he was not working at the time. He does not say his cloudbuster was not grounded into the underground water table. He does not present any reason to think my explanation of how such grounding could cause an earthquake is flawed and could not be right. He simply brings in the bogus straw man of saying I will next accuse him of causing the Southeast Asian Tsunami, something I did not accuse him of. This is a red herring known in debate as ''setting up a straw man''. It is not a valid tactic. DeMeo also refers to me as an ''agent provacateur''. The customary use of this term is for an agent of the government. Needless to say, even Dr.DeMeo is not so delusional as to seriously think that any government agency is trying to discredit his cloudbusting work. He is just throwing in that term as a buzzword to further smeer me. He goes on to say that I threatened violence. The letter he quotes, however, is not a threat that I will do the violence. It is a warning that his actions may bring down governmental action against him, as the reference to Waco and Rubby Ridge makes clear. He then goes on to say I have attempted to make it seem as if American Orgonomy is ''right wing''. My remark about Mr. Bush was based on his well-known claim that the alleged terrorists ''hate freedom''. That is exactly the sort of thinking we have heard many times over the years from the American College of Orgonomy. It would not be at all surprising if someone of the presidential advisors or speachwriters had been in therapy with some orgonomist, and had picked up the idea from the frequent articles in the Journal of Orgonomy which express similiar ideas. But that is, of course, speculation. That the American College of Orgonomy is a right-wing organization, however, is a FACT. A glance at almost any of the sociopolitical articles that have been published in that journal over the years will confirm that. I do not have to make efforts to prove the existence of a right-wing faction in orgonomy. Dr.DeMeo repeatedly says I attack ALL orgonomy, not just him. That is not true. The misunderstanding arises from the fact that he thinks only his particular group are ''orgonomy'', and that all other Reichians are not. This is the crux of the whole matter. Dr. DeMeo thinks he is the Pope of orgonomy, and can excommunicate anyone he pleases from orgonomy. He cannot. Orgonomy is not an organization. It is a field of endevor. Anyone can engage in work in orgonomy without any permission from anyone else. This includes cloudbusting work, and therapy or training of therapists, NO MATTER HOW MUCH DEMEO OR ANYONE ELSE WANTS THEM TO STOP! The ACO has always insisted that they alone have the right to license therapists, and DeMeo, who was originally involved with that organization, has inherited from them the idea that nobody should do cloudbusting without his permission. Finally, Dr.DeMeo claims that I am an ''enemy of orgonomy''. If orgonomy is a science, as he claims, how could that be? Is there such a thing as an ''enemy of astronomy''? Is there anyone who is an ''enemy of chemistry''? Would anyone be barred from a conference on physics or astronomy because they had written articles critical of astronomers or physicists? This is behavior typical of cults, not scientists. If orgonomy is a cult whose leader is James DeMeo, I am indeed its enemy.
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