one thing I hate about liberal and progressive politic is the ability to get lost over processing crap. this debate on abu ghraib vs mini abu is like when I used to attend people of color conferences and listen to african americans vs. native americans vs. japanese americans vs. chicanos debate which was worse, slavery, genocide, internment or economic servitude, etc, etc. can we agree it is all part of the same disease and it sucked? and can we move on from mental masturbation and back to action? It seems that most of the low people doing the actual evil stuff at abu were in real life (when not in iraq)penal officers or cops. normally they got to torture people in US jails and on the streets of our nation. Once their skills were finely honed they made excellent employees for the army as international torturers. These people were supervised by mid level military and CIA officers who came up with acceptible methods of torture and above that are the higher ups like cheney, bush, and their legal advisors who ensured that whatever happened at abu ghraib wouldn't affect the presidency and wouldn't "legally" be defined as torture. Now I'm not saying that this was abu ghraib, but for people who wonder how good or normal people end up doing or authorizing bad things, just look to this mini event at UCSC as an example. you have the chancellor probably taking her cues or marching orders from above. You have UC legal officials warning students prior to the event that many activities associated with tent U could be "actionable" (see this weeks metroactive news) and they could be thrown out of the university for participating. You have mid level UC employees, who are the policy enforcers for the chancellor. Just look to the threads detailing gail heit's and jean marie scotts letters warning students about policy violations of tent U. just look to photos showing these women happily complying with enforcing UC policy even if it meant painful arrests of students. and look at see how dutiful the police were in their efforts to keep the barbarians at the gates of UCSC. Ward Churchill wrote an interesting essay, asking about whether or not the twin towers were a legitimate target of terrorists. No Ward wasn't advocating terror, but he dared asked the question about what level of responsibilty do people in suits have for their everyday seeminly legal and legitimate business actions that result in starvation, poverty, enviornmental destruction. I don't think any UCSC staff member is inherently evil (except maybe the parking police ; ) but I want to point out that once again the cops will likely get more bad press then the folks in suits will. And after all, who is it who is actually legitimizing the violence against students under the guise of maintaining the law.