I watched some of yesterday’s live television coverage of the events leading up to the naming of a new pope.  There were tens of thousands people standing in a pouring rain, but without any apparent police supervision: no SWAT team armed with machine-guns, no helicopters flapping above the crowd, and none of the other presence of state violence that would have occurred had a dozen American college students stood on a street-corner carrying signs. The Swiss Guard then entered the scene: a handful of men wearing helmets and uniforms of medieval origin, and carrying nothing more lethal than spears.  The Guard’s numbers seem to have been … Continue reading A Different Perspective