"FBI goes to movies to target laser at planes" Associated Press June 04, 2014
ST. LOUIS — Silence your cellphone. Save the movie commentary for later. And if you know someone who aims a laser pointer at an airplane, give us a call.
A new FBI campaign unveiled Tuesday will place public safety messages during movie previews and is offering rewards of $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of anyone who threatens aircraft in a laser attack.
I'm glad I didn't go see Godzilla or Edge of Tomorrow, and now will not.
Probably a good idea. Watching movies in the dark can hurt the eyes -- like someone pointing a laser in them.
The effort builds on a program launched in February in a dozen cities, including Chicago, Houston, New York, Phoenix, and Washington.
For the next 90 days, the bureau’s 56 field offices are offering the rewards.
Federal officials said the deliberate targeting of planes by people with handheld lasers has increased significantly in recent years. In 2005, when the FBI and Federal Aviation Administration began tracking such crimes, fewer than 300 laser attacks occurred. By last year, that number had increased to nearly 4,000, according to the FAA.
‘‘It’s usually young people horsing around,’’ said Edward Reinhold, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s St. Louis office. ‘‘They’re just unaware of [the dangers].’’
In the Midwest, the campaign will be bolstered by messages shown during movie previews at Wehrenberg Theatres, which owns theaters in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri.
‘‘Here’s a pointer,’’ the public service announcement reads. ‘‘Aiming a laser at an aircraft is a federal crime.’’
Sergeant Dan Cunningham, a helicopter pilot with the St. Louis County Police Department, said he’s been ‘‘lased’’ numerous times in recent years by powerful beams that can be seen from nearly 1 mile away.
‘‘I don’t know that anybody realizes how much of an effect it has on an aircraft,’’ he said. ‘‘It completely blinds you.’’
Watching TV will do that.
In California, a 26-year-old man was convicted in March of shining a laser pointer at a Fresno police helicopter and a hospital helicopter. A federal judge sentenced Sergio Patrick Rodriguez, of Clovis, to 14 years in prison.
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"This is more wag the dog propaganda. During the Egyptian revolution that ousted Mubarak, protesters bathed overhead helicopters with laser pointers.
The helicopter did not fall out of the sky. The helicopter did not explode. The pilots were not blinded, and indeed from the fact that they did not alter their flight path it appears they may not have even noticed.
The fact is that the beam from a laser pointer spreads out rapidly, unlike a true precision laboratory laser. After only a few hundred yards they are difficult to see at all.
Now I agree that it is a bad idea to point these lasers at anyone, but this resurgence of concern about lasers pointed at planes looks more like some department head out to prove how necessary they are in order to avoid the budget axe!--whatreallyhappened
Or create the absurd pretext for another FBI-instigated false flag event involving planes and set-up patsies?
Maybe they brought down the long-forgotten Malaysian flight?
Besides, no one is flying anyway:
"Few customers for Boeing 747 despite upgrade" by Julie Johnsson and Andrea Rothman | Bloomberg News June 04, 2014
CHICAGO — Boeing’s iconic 747 jumbo jet is gliding deeper into its twilight years, with a new Air Force One fleet offering the strongest sales prospect for a passenger model that no longer fits most airlines’ needs.
Even as Boeing talks with Emirates airline about an order for the upgraded 747-8, the carrier played down the chances of a deal because it’s buying 150 Boeing 777X jets. That plane will be bigger and more efficient than the current 777, a twin-engine aircraft so capable that it’s cannibalizing Boeing’s jumbo sales.
Commercial success has proved elusive for the 747-8, the latest update to an almost 50-year-old plane known for its distinctive humpbacked fuselage. While the 747-8 is a lock to win bidding that opens this year to replace the president’s fleet, waning demand for the cargo variant further imperils an assembly line that has slowed to just one or two planes a month.
That greenhouse-gassing, global-warming hypocrite.
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It wasn’t always so grim, but the 747-8’s likeliest sales are to the Pentagon.
See: Begging Boeing
Oh, they only made $1.23 billion last quarter?
How grim!
The Air Force is planning to upgrade the all-747 presidential aircraft fleet by 2023 and has also begun studying whether to replace the ‘‘Doomsday’’ fleet, four 747-200 jets hardened against nuclear blasts that provide a mobile military command, Charles Gulick, an Air Force spokesman, said in an e-mail.
Why?
WHAT ARE THEY PREPARING TO DO!!!!?
The White House’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposes spending $1.65 billion over five years to replace its aging Air Force One fleet, which began ferrying President George H.W. Bush in August 1990.
Meanwhile, you deal with austerity and service cuts from this $elf-$erving government.
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And they wonder why we are burning with rage?
