G. Flint Taylor* and arsonist/murderer Madison Hobley**
Very good people are appalled by the idea of torture. The idea of torture in Chicago by homicide detectives committed to systemtic racism has been carefully crafted and marketed over the last thirty years.
Some very bad people created the Burge Mythology and will make hundreds of thousands of more dollars, when Chicago's aldermen vote for the Burge Reparations ordinance. It will be unanimous. Not one Alderman has the guts to ask for a true analysis of the Burge Myth.
Academics, Activists and Advocacy Agendanistas have parlayed the idea of torture into a mythology that permeates what passes for Chicago's corporate news media.
Carol Marin, Mark Brown, Eric Zorn and other iconic columnists have not tucked their snouts into the story of Area 2, but have relied completely on the work of John Conroy and the propaganda machine of G. Flint Taylor. Code of Silence, Black Box, House of Screams, Vietnam 101 Torture are part of the Burge Industries glossary developed by Sasha Abramsky, Bernardine Dohrn, G. Flint Taylor, Northwestern Law, and especially John Conroy, who can not seem to be given the contract by the corporate media that laps up his every nuanced participle. Why is he not the editor of some great metropolitan newspaper? They all redact his texts and themes.
Twelve citizens should decide for or against Jon Burge, who has been fabricated into the face of torture, by G. Flint Taylor, The MacArthur Center for Justice, Jon Loevy, Locke Bowman, Jean McLean Snyder, Berardine Dohrn, WTTW, WBEZ, NPR, and the lazy and compliant editorial boards. As it is, Jon Burge has been tripped up, convicted of perjury, sent to prison, released and now waits for the next bundle of legal barbed wire.
I have followed this story as a citizen and as an educator who spends seven days a week in Area 2 - I live here and live with the fall-out that has evolved as the result of the erosion in faith for Law Enforcement at the hands of lawyers, louts and loudmouths. A rainforest of crime has rooted up in Chicago- not in Lakeview, Highland Park, Winnteka, or Wilmette, but in Gresham, Englewood, Brainerd, Morgan Park, Beverly and Roseland.
I have witnessed the savagery of street thuggery and attended the funerals of too many sweet and hard working young black men slaughtered in the Thug Comfort Zone created by Burge Industries - Eric Ersery, Jason Riley, Steven Lyons,Antonio Collins, Eric and Steve Lee to name but a few. I have witnessed the police officers and detectives of Gresham District (6th) and Area 2.
I don't buy the systemic racist torture at all. Am I intellectually dishonest? I don't think so.
I have followed this story very religiously since Officers Fahey and O'Brien were tortured and murdered. I know that I have found the endless chorus of charges and the endless failures to make the case for torture a compelling case for doubt. What happened? I do not know, but I do not buy for one second the charges howled by G. Flint Taylor and the murdering savages that he represents. I suspect that G. Flint Taylor and others in his cottage industry including Chicago's news media want the Burge Saga to continue.
The perjury case against Jon Burge,it seems to me, was merely another legal sop paid to G.Flint Taylor, by judges and attorneys general. The City of Chicago and Cook County tried tossing millions of dollars at this public pest. They would have done well to stand in court and demanded a battle royal against the charges. They did not. Today, the City Council will 5.5 million more dollars to G. Flint Taylor and The Peoples Law Office.
A jury should decide one way or the other, but do not think for a minute that Burge Industries will ever be satisfied. If Jon Burge is ever convicted of the torture the mythology demands we accept, or is acquitted, G. Flint Taylor and his disciples will howl for more, more, more court time and greater fees.
Taylor is record for more legal battles no matter how much the City of Chicago gives away. Not only legal battles, but political battles,” said Flint Taylor, who represents several men who accused Mr. Burge and others of torturing them while at Area 2 violent-crimes unit of the police department on the Far South Side in the 1970s and ’80s. “This is just one phase in the long struggle against police torture.”
Police officer and author Martin Preib has pulled apart the author of the Burge Mythology -John Conroy.
Conroy made The Chicago Reader the Norton Anthology of Burge Myths; however, John Conroy was discharged from the Chicago Reader, never found work on any news paper, magazine, or electronic media server, but landed a post at DePaul University after a very brief time with Andy Shaw's BGA.
Mr. Conroy never responded to Martin Preib's critique of his methodology. Why is that?
Nevertheless, John Conroy will be kept busy and his story line will continue as Carol Marin and others play the Polyanna do-gooders.
Perhaps, William Crawford's new book on this cottage industry tied to police brutality mythology and duplicitous Wrongful Conviction Complex of journalists, criminals, lawyers and activists will wake some people up. I hope so.
More kids will be slaughtered. If it bleeds it leads. If it gets in a column, G. Flint Taylor makes money.
The scent of easy money, like the taste for blood can not be sated.
* “…Former FBI agents have told Village Voice Media the basis for their belief that the Weather Underground was behind McDonnell's murder. The agents have revealed that two credible eyewitnesses — both former left-wing radicals tied to the Weathermen — gave detailed statements to investigators in the 1970s alleging that Dohrn and Howard Machtinger, another member of the group, were personally involved in organizing the deadly attack. Both witnesses claimed to have participated in meetings where the bombing was planned, and one confessed to having cased the police station for the Weathermen prior to the explosion,” wrote the River Front Times. Martin Preib
**The centerpiece of the Conroy article are the claims of Hobley’s attorneys that a gas can found by detectives at the crime scene the day after the murders vindicated Hobley. This gas can was evidence of a police frame-up, according to the attorneys. The controversy over the gas can eventually led to a long evidentiary review. A judge eventually ruled that there was nothing about the gas can sufficient to overturn Hobley’s conviction. Martin Preib
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/us/27cncburge.html
