BOSTON, SNIFFLE, BOSTON

Boston and the rest of the world have to take a lesson from Vatican City and Rome.  Talk about soft target!  These crowds are HUGE, they're celebratory and they are all unarmed. Yes, I have been there often, very often.  There was a time when I felt totally safe.  Then there was the shooting of the Pope; then there was the Twin Towers; Oklahoma City and some more.  I have also been in St. Peter's Square after all of this and the crowds there do not get any smaller.  They are still huge and generally well behaved.  They are also very sure that they are being watched.  How can they not know.  Just look at that uniform.  Only blind people  could miss it.  It is the epitome of high visibility security.
See that halberd?  Don't mess
with it.  It is sharp,  and it is pointy...real pointy.  See that baby face?  He knows how to use it.  He also knows that everyone in the crowd knows that the pretty clothes and the pretty face are as tough as nails.  And the eyes? Those eyes don't miss a trick.  They are trained to catch every detail.  The ears below the helmet are also trained.  Most pairs of ears sitting above the pretty colors understand at least three languages.  Many of them can handle and sort out four or five.  And these are the "cute" ones.
Go back up to the young lad in the picture up on the left.  See that sword on his left hip?  I guarantee you that is is not an ornament.  These guys are the NHSA (National Halberd & Sword Association.)
Every crowd in this part of the world also knows that there are many "spectators" who are trained security people.  Some from Vatican city and some from Italy.  It is well known that St. Peter's Square is deeply infiltrated by security personnel.  The "narcs" are perhaps lucky that many eyeballs are on the Michelangelo uniforms making it easier to profile the would be bad people.  Who knows?

Yes, as we know even he cannot be 100% sure of his safety.  It is however clear that there is a presence around him, one, colorful and attractive and one plain and unobtrusive.  Is there a lesson there for us?  It is hard to say. St. Peter's Square is not 26 miles long.  It has its own inherent dangers.  The greatest one is that it doesn't present any great and clear way of escape.  It of course has cameras, but it also has the network that I mentioned above.
The last time I was there, less than one year ago, I realized that this could in fact be a target.  Not for any special reason.  Just because that is the effect that today's world has on just about all of us.  It is too bad.  All we can do as individual's is to keep making deposits into the "good human" bank with regularity in order to see if we can make some progress toward outweighing the scales of the malevolent buffons who surround us everywhere we go.
In the end, I still think that the department of Homeland Security migh profit from a visit to the Swiss Guard Commander.  I'm sure that he speaks English.