Picture: This is a mugshot of the gunman, James Lee, who is now
deceased.
On September 1st, 2010, a gunman came rushing into the Discovery Channel headquarters in Maryland. He took hostages, saying that he was strapped with bombs that were ready to go off. The gunman, James Lee, was shot by police 4 hours later and no hostages were harmed. Lee ran a website called SaveThePlanetProtest.com, starting in 2008. protesting the Discovery channels television shows. He complained that the shows on the channel were for profit and not humanitarian purposes. Lee had been charged with disorderly conduct in 2008 for a protest outside the same building. The police tried to negotiate with Lee for over 4 hours, his demands very similar to those listed on his website a few days before, demanding that the channel show how to save the planet by decreasing human population. He specifically asked that they not show “the birth of any more parasitic human infants,” and that “in those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed.” Lee was shot and killed by police after most of the people had evacuated the building, including the day care center.
Picture: Here is a picture of Lee in his 2008
protest which later became a bit more violent
Opinion/Reflection:
Some people don't know where to stop when it comes to protecting the environment. Lee also has the view that we must take down our population in numbers. In further research I find that he finds infants disgusting creatures, and on his website has many misspellings and uses capital letters most of the time. Personally, I think it was right for the police to shoot him, and that we shouldn't have to stop growing as a nation, that is not our problem.
Questions:
1. Was it right for the police to shoot Lee even though he may have been mentally unstable?
2. In what ways can we improve our living without a decrease in the population?
3. Do we need to set limitations on the number of children a family is allowed to have? Why or why not.
4. While many environmentalists aren't this crazy, why do you think so many take it way overboard?
5. Do you think the environment is more important than a human life? Would you risk others lives to only possibly help save the environment?
In defense of the police, Lee was armed and dangerous. They had probable cause. James Lee wasn't making the world a better place as environmentalist try so very hard to do. He endangered the life of humans, mammals. When people start taking what they believe in to the extreme it hurts them as well as everyone around them. Lee had the right to express himself, just not in a violent manner. How could he have expressed himself without endangering others?
ReplyDeleteThe police were completely right in this situation. James Lee was obviously an unstable, armed threat that was insane and could have hurt someone if he was not killed. Lee was obviously an environmentalist, but didn't appreciate his own kind enough to respect the human population. Referring to one of Mara's questions, I believe that it was a good decision for the police to kill Lee even though he was mentally unstable, simply because his beliefs were obviously set in place, and he was very dangerous at that point.
ReplyDeleteThe police were in the right here. This man was indeed unstable and dangerous. While a death is never a good thing, this James Lee had to be stopped. However, this does not mean that he was wrong about everything he had said. Overpopulation is indeed an issue, although his views on how to stop it, obviously were not ideal. And his opinion on The Discovery Channel could be argued by some. Environmentalists are now made to look bad because of him, but this is obviously not true. He just took everything too far. Unfortunately, although a child limit is a smart idea, it makes the US look bad. Also, what happens if a family (whether accidental or not)has more children than the limit?(Because it will happen.) We can't just kill them, the US citizens would cause the country to implode.
ReplyDeletei can not believe that a person would do this. Even after i've known about it when it first happened. there really are crazy people in the world. i think that it was right because he could of cause more harm. i think that the number people have is up to them because we live in a country with FREEDOM. i think people take it overboard because it gets attention from the press
ReplyDelete