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# Beautiful Subversion: Protestors Create Ad Hoc Light Show
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/beautiful-subversion-protestors-create-ad-hoc-light-show-6920909a02e5d8d823334db4/
- Published: 2013-07-02T00:01:05.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:45:19.000Z
- Description: As the deepening crisis of confidence in Egypt's Mohammad Morsi unfolds in the country's streets, a video shot yesterday offered a dose of the surreal: a military helicopter hovering over Tahrir Square with protestor laser beams dancing kaleidoscopically on the aircraft's belly.
- Author: Mostafa Heddaya
- Tags: Opinion, Egypt, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:59 (2012, 2013, part 2)

![heli-egypt-640](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/07/heli-egypt-640.gif)

As the deepening crisis of confidence in Egypt’s Mohammad Morsi unfolds in the country’s streets, a video shot yesterday offered a dose of the surreal: a military helicopter hovering over Tahrir Square with protestor laser beams dancing kaleidoscopically on the aircraft’s belly. The footage, published on the YouTube [channel](http://www.youtube.com/user/MubasherYoum7?feature=watch&ref=hyperallergic.com) of an Egyptian video news site, shows a sky full of fireworks giving way to a military helicopter, which is quickly targeted by a staggering number of laser pointers. These shaky beams — mostly green — are ostensibly meant to distract the pilots, and the sheer number of them demonstrates the preparedness of Egypt’s protestors two and a half years after historic mass actions toppled the 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarak.

The Aviationist, an aircraft blog, [reports](http://theaviationist.com/?p=18843&ref=hyperallergic.com) that the searchlight-equipped military chopper is likely a Soviet [Mi-8/17 Hip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil%5FMi-8?ref=hyperallergic.com). Though it’s impossible to tell whether the laser pointers disrupted the Egyptian military’s helicopter mission as intended, there has been a crackdown in the United States on this very behavior in recent years, with one California teenager [receiving](http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/26/4150238/teen-gets-30-months-in-jail-for-laser-pointer-attack-under-faa-new-law?ref=hyperallergic.com) 30 months in jail for shining a laser pointer at an airplane. The FAA [claims](http://techland.time.com/2011/06/02/faa-adds-laser-pointers-to-list-of-things-that-could-cost-you-11000/?ref=hyperallergic.com) it gets thousands of complaints regarding such laser pointer abuse annually, though only a handful are prosecuted, and the FBI [produced a video](http://www.fbi.gov/news/videos/making-a-point-about-lasers?ref=hyperallergic.com) about it in 2011.

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h/t [Jalopnik](http://jalopnik.com/egyptian-protesters-paint-helicopter-with-hundreds-of-l-634649644?ref=hyperallergic.com).