Note: There’s a response and analysis to this post here.
NOTE: Predictably, Joe Romm has turned this post into a personal bashing of me over at his Climate Progress blog. For some eye opening viewpoints from his side of the argument, have a look at the 495 comments on his parent blog “Think Progress” here. UPDATE: many of those ugly and violent comments at TP have been “sanitized” since I drew embarrassing attention to them. The word “filthy” in my post below, is pointing to the multiple use of the word to describe humans in the manifesto of the gunman, also published below. I realize that may upset some people, and for that I apologize. However, it is instructive to read the manifesto to see how global warming hype drove this man to do what he did. From this MSNBC story:
Lee said he experienced an ‘‘awakening” when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental documentary ‘‘An Inconvenient Truth.”
UPDATE: It’s over, from MSNBC:
Police shot a gunman who held three hostages for several hours Wednesday at the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, Md., authorities said. They said the hostages were safe and the gunman was in custody. Police said the gunman’s condition was unknown. At least one explosive device went off when he was shot, and other explosive devices could still be in the building in Montgomery County in suburban Washington, D.C., they said.
UPDATE2: MSNBC is now reporting the gunman has been killed.
=======================================
Well, you filthy readers, see what happens when we don’t acquiesce? In case you haven’t heard by now, a gunman named James Lee, an Asian man with a years-long vendetta against the Discovery Channel cable network has entered the building and got an armed hostage taking situation going on right now.
Some news coverage here:
Armed Man Believed to Be Environmental Protester Takes Hostages in Discovery Channel Building
Among his demands from the manifesto on his website:
Find solutions so that people stop breeding as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the destruction of the planet!
MSNBC reports:
Lee said he experienced an ‘‘awakening” when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental documentary ‘‘An Inconvenient Truth.”
Perhaps inspired by Gore, and Dr. James Hansen’s recent call for civil disobedience, we have today’s environmental public relations train wreck turned armed hostage situation.
THE MANIFESTO OF JAMES LEE:
(downloaded before traffic took it down):PDF here at TMZ
The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY:
1. The Discovery Channel and it’s affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s “My Ishmael” pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!
2. All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.
3. All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. There is no sense in advertising weapons of mass-destruction anymore. Instead, talk about ways to disassemble civilization and concentrate the message in finding SOLUTIONS to solving global military mechanized conflict. Again, solutions solutions instead of just repeating the same old wars with newer weapons. Also, keep out the fraudulent peace movements. They are liars and fakes and had no real intention of ending the wars. ALL OF THEM ARE FAKE! On one hand, they claim they want the wars to end, on the other, they are demanding the human population increase. World War II had 2 Billion humans and after that war, the people decided that tripling the population would assure peace. WTF??? STUPIDITY! MORE HUMANS EQUALS MORE WAR!
4. Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn’t, then get hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??
5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)
6. Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy. Find ways so that people don’t build more housing pollution which destroys the environment to make way for more human filth! Find solutions so that people stop breeding as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the destruction of the planet!
7. Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people’s brains until they get it!!
8. Saving the Planet means saving what’s left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the human race from breeding any more disgusting human babies! You’re the media, you can reach enough people. It’s your resposibility because you reach so many minds!!!
9. Develop shows that will correct and dismantle the dangerous US world economy. Find solutions for their disasterous Ponzi-Casino economy before they take the world to another nuclear war.
10. Stop all shows glorifying human birthing on all your channels and on TLC. Stop Future Weapons shows or replace the dialogue condemning the people behind these developments so that the shows become exposes rather than advertisements of Arms sales and development!
11. You’re also going to find solutions for unemployment and housing. All these unemployed people makes me think the US is headed toward more war.
Humans are the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures around and are wrecking what’s left of the planet with their false morals and breeding culture.
For every human born, ACRES of wildlife forests must be turned into farmland in order to feed that new addition over the course of 60 to 100 YEARS of that new human’s lifespan! THIS IS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FOREST CREATURES!!!! All human procreation and farming must cease!
It is the responsiblity of everyone to preserve the planet they live on by not breeding any more children who will continue their filthy practices. Children represent FUTURE catastrophic pollution whereas their parents are current pollution. NO MORE BABIES! Population growth is a real crisis. Even one child born in the US will use 30 to a thousand times more resources than a Third World child. It’s like a couple are having 30 babies even though it’s just one! If the US goes in this direction maybe other countries will too!
Also, war must be halted. Not because it’s morally wrong, but because of the catastrophic environmental damage modern weapons cause to other creatures. FIND SOLUTIONS JUST LIKE THE BOOK SAYS! Humans are supposed to be inventive. INVENT, DAMN YOU!!
The world needs TV shows that DEVELOP solutions to the problems that humans are causing, not stupify the people into destroying the world. Not encouraging them to breed more environmentally harmful humans.
Saving the environment and the remaning species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.
The humans? The planet does not need humans.
You MUST KNOW the human population is behind all the pollution and problems in the world, and YET you encourage the exact opposite instead of discouraging human growth and procreation. Surely you MUST ALREADY KNOW this!
I want Discovery Communications to broadcast on their channels to the world their new program lineup and I want proof they are doing so. I want the new shows started by asking the public for inventive solution ideas to save the planet and the remaining wildlife on it.
These are the demands and sayings of Lee.
==============================
h/t to the Seattle Weekly blogs and WUWT DocattheAutopsy
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It was already in ancient greek drama :
Those who the gods are wishing to destroy are made crazy to begin with !
Violence from the environmentalist front isn’t new. Sometimes it’s deranged individuals, like this guy here. Or as in 2002, when Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated by a radical environmentalist (and animal rights activist).
And sometimes it’s organized eco-terrorrism (like ELF or ALF – arson being their preferred tactic) or violent anti-globalization….
As Flemish journalist Paul Belien http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Beli%C3%ABn put it: “The bullets come from the left. Intolerance today (…) has but one synonym: Left” (http://secessie.nu/?tekst=toonhtml&artikel=904-61 )
These are the demands and sayings of Lee.
That’s going to be a new Internet meme. It sums up how naive, ignorant, and arrogant he was, all in one signature line.
Bill Gates should give me his billions because I know how to have more fun than he does. And the Victoria’s Secret models shall live at my house from now on. The Federal government shall tax me no more, and when I drive all people shall pull over so I can get where I’m going faster. These are the demands and sayings of Taylor. 😛
I say play this long and loud! By golly we better make a fuss over it!
This is the logical consummation of the explicitly stated green ‘virtues’.
Let it be a ‘learning moment’ – and let us learn.
Deranged individuals don’t just fall from the sky. They aren’t examples of intelligent design and didn’t fall, ripe and ready, from a tree.
They were taught. They believed. They rehearsed. Then, they acted.
We paid for it at every turn. We should stop.
One needs to remember some Al Gore’s quotes:
-“If you’re a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience…”
-“Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play.”
–Around the world, when politicians fail to act to solve the climate crisis, people are taking action (…) It is my hope we see activism like this here in the United States.
Ecotretas
@Keith. Kloor says:
“Many of you (but not all I stress), including Anthony, are swimming in some slimy waters on this one”
Argument fail
—————————————————————————————–
“Lee said he experienced an ‘‘awakening” when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental documentary ‘‘An Inconvenient Truth.””
—————————————————————————————
Global Warming Fears Seen In Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Patients:
http://www.voxy.co.nz/national/psychiatry-congress/5/47523
Baby survives parents’ global warming suicide pact
A seven-month-old girl survived for three days alone with a bullet in her chest after being shot by her parents as part of a suicide pact over their fears about global warming.:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/7344329/Baby-survives-parents-global-warming-suicide-pact.html
@Ecotretas: Civil disobedience isnt strapping a bomb around yourself, but something like sitting down in front of a bulldozer.
So some nut grabbed a bomb and hostages and got shot. Noone was hurt (except for him). He wanted to rid the planets of humans. How nice of him to start with himself.
Usually the “warmistas” actually care for the humans, not the planet. The planet just needs a bit of time (a few million years) to be okay again.
From the Danish media:
“Environmental activist killed after hostage Action”
An armed radical environmental activist, who Wednesday took three people hostage at the TV station, Discovery’s headquarters in the U.S., was shot and killed by police. Hostages are unharmed, police said.
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=da&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=da&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dr.dk%2FNyheder%2FUdland%2F2010%2F09%2F02%2F095857.htm
I’d like to add one point from developmental psychology (IANAP, but here goes).
Every child born is born pre-ego, and has to develop, grow up, create a healthy modern rational thinking ego, and get on with adult life. But every child born has to go through this process and the process can stall at earlier stages, be it cognitively, morally, emotionally, etc.
What it means is that there is always a fresh supply of people who are intellectually capable of understanding global issues, but are in other ways pre-modern, pre-rational, pre-healthy ego. Many of the world’s terrorists fit this profile, where their basic drive is anger and power (like an angry small child) but intellectually they take up some cause or other. The cause may sound noble, but their drive is infantile. So they figure, nobody but me understands the truth, nobody but me cares, nobody but me matters, nobody but me is worth anything. And they hook that ruthless drive into a cause, with catastrophic consequences. Ruthless, because they only see their own “me” point of view, and can’t comprehend that others might have other points of view that are better.
The point is, every human being has to grow up, and in most parts of the world, people are not living in conditions that are conducive to people maturing into modern rational egos that can take the views of many others into account, and value those others.
So there is an actual danger, when people promoting a cause decide to use fear as a means to gain publicity, and when in service of that cause they start to talk about dismantling civilisation. Because the pre-modern mind never liked the modern world anyway (see, it’s where people are always listening to each other). The pre-modern childish mind much prefers dictatorships, power, aggression, and domination. And if an individual can’t become dictator, they can become terrorist. (It carries the same lack of healthy regard for other human beings.)
So, as noble and important as environmentalism is, and it is, it must try to steer clear of using messages that appeal to pre-modern power drives, because in fact, most of the world, because most of the world lives in poverty, in sorta feudal conditions in some places, most of the world’s people are not post-modern egalitarian sensitive world carers, they are pre-modern power driven angry ruthless individuals. (They can’t afford modern sensibilities, because their lives are usually too hard and basic for those to be useful.)
If someone wants to talk about the world ending due to global warming, what terrorist can resist using that as the ultimate justification for their most brutal and mindless actions?
Remember, the key point from developmental psychology is that all humans are born at stage zero, pre-ego, pre-rational, pre-sensitive self, pre-morality, and that a significant percentage remain at infantile stages in various ways. So there is always a fresh supply of potential terrorists. (It is a very bleak picture but there it is.)
I’m having difficulty understanding why this thread is “despicable”. Why is discussion on this now verboten, and who are you people to demand this?
Ten years ago I could not possibly have imagined that we would now be in a situation where artists, comedians and others would be terrified of drawning a potato and calling it “Mohammed”. But it has happened.
It behoves us to ask in this situation what kind of chilling effect this could have on any news provider’s willingness to even engage “the other side”, especially if there are repeat incidents and if what other posters are saying is true, this behaviour is even being praised elsewhere.
And yet the chilling is already starting from another angle – some of you are claiming that we cannot even discuss this event in the context that he may have been motivated by fundamentalist catastrophic warmism because he was “obviously” mentally ill. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t. I don’t see any a priori reason why debate should be shut down because of this speculation. Frankly, stating that it should be seems like a colossal cop-out. I spent thirteen years of my life dealing with violent people as a nightclub doorman – people who use guns and extort behaviour or goods under menaces are not to be regarded as immediately insane.
I made the mistake of checking out the “Think Progress” blog. Oh my, so much anger and hatred. It made me nauseated. What was described was neither coherent thought, nor progressive. The hostage taker was derided as “right wing” when his population control theories and reversion to earlier cultural forms are all very firmly left wing as are his views on the status of humans on this planet and the need for authoritarian government to effect his desired changes. The lack of rationality in the hostage taker’s views and in those expressed in the “Think Progress” blog together with the intolerance of the views of others is typical of those who have left reason far behind. I commend Melanie Phillips’ book “The World Turned Upside Down” for a logical description as to how these disordered thought processes have taken root.
[invalid email address ~ ctm]
going back and deleting others. you were warned.
Keith Kloor: September 1, 2010 at 10:30 pm
Many of you (but not all I stress), including Anthony, are swimming in some slimy waters on this one. Here’s my take: [link to article]
Your opprobrium is touching, but fallacious. There is nothing wrong with condemning Mr. Lee’s actions, regardless of his mental state or capacity.
I was also puzzled by the question of mental illness and showed this case to a friend who is MedDr and psychiatrist in Strasburg hospital .
He told me that from the legal point of view (under french law) this person would be considered as fully responsible of his acts without a possibility to plead temporary or chronical abolishment of discernement ability . So legally not mentally ill .
From the medical point of view he thinks that there are symptoms of personality disorder like anti social behaviour and phobias .
These can be considered as mental illnesses but from what I understood there are millions of forms of personality disorders ranging between slightly impairing and fully incapacitating .
He also said that if he examines a random sample of people (you , me , your neighbour) in about 1/3 of cases a form of mental disorder will be found , the most common being depressive and anxiety states .
So it looks like (this is my inference) that this person was not more mentally ill than a Greenpeace activist driving his ship with a collision intent or a Jehovah witness preventing his children to get a blood transfusion .
.
These speculations will be commented in many medical analysis that will certainly appear in the US media today or tomorrow . However as it often goes regarding mental illness , the experts will almost certainly not agree in their diagnostics .
Stefan
So there is an actual danger, when people promoting a cause decide to use fear as a means to gain publicity, and when in service of that cause they start to talk about dismantling civilisation. Because the pre-modern mind never liked the modern world anyway (see, it’s where people are always listening to each other). The pre-modern childish mind much prefers dictatorships, power, aggression, and domination. And if an individual can’t become dictator, they can become terrorist. (It carries the same lack of healthy regard for other human beings.)
I fully subscribe to this .
UK Sceptic says: “How shocking. I’ve just scanned through some of the comments on Think Progress. I do not believe I have ever seen such a large magnitude of intellectual and moral pollution concentrated on one spot. I hope never to see it again.”
Scary isn’t it? I think a lot of the people commenting there are only a few ticks away from doing the same thing as Lee. A toxic combination of anger and self righteousness makes it all too easy to rationalize the most heinous of actions.
I’d strongly recommend Eric Hoffer’s book “The True Believer” to get a look into the minds of such people. One of his quotes “A man who’s business is not worth minding, will console himself by trying to mind yours.” Pretty much describes the ec0-left.
When I see how he describes children as filthy human children,I can’t spare much sympathy for him.
He really had a problem with babies and children.Oil is not filthy,pollution is not filthy,but babies and children are.I’m glad he picked a place where no children were.
Saving the planet … one enviromentalist at a time.
Lady McRomm is going crazy.
The spot won’t go out.
Terrorists are just plain criminals and deserve no special consideration. Sympathy? I have sympathy for those that are terrorized, not for the terrorist.
Mr. Lee committed a terrorist act.
Terrorists believe they are morally justified in carrying out violent crimes. Having that belief may be a sign of sociopathic behavior or not. Was Mr. Lee reported to be a member of an organization that was somehow involved with his terrorist act? I did not see any evidence in the blogs or any news media reporting on it.
Mr. Lee’s manifesto certainly does contain express statements of the tenets of some of the varieties of ideological environmentalism. Was Mr. Lee aware that some ideological environmentalists advocate violence to futher their cause? I do not know, but by his manifesto he seemed aware of some body of literature from the ideological environmentalists.
Watch how the media spin this regarding eco relevant or politically relevant. It will provide a data point about whether the media really are moving toward balance in reporting on AGW.
John
Graeme says:
September 1, 2010 at 4:29 pm
I’m sorry, unless evidence turns up that this guy had been certified in the past, I’m not buying the idea that he was insane……
_______________________________________________________________________
Depends on the “definition of “insane” if Lee was “insane” then a whole lot of professors teaching in Colleges and Universities are too and they are “infecting” their students and others with their brand of insanity – hatred of the “affluent middle class.”
For example University of Texas professor, Eric Pianka who “declared that AIDS was not killing off the surplus human population fast enough. What is needed, he said, is Ebola to kill 5.8 billion of the world’s 6 billion plus humans. The speech received a prolonged standing ovation at the Academy’s annual meeting at Lamar University in Beaumont…” (I find that chilling)
Or Prince Philip who said: “If I were reincarnated, I would come back, return to the Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
Or Ward Churchill, former ethnic studies professor, essay about the justice of 9/11: “Some People Push Back”: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens
Or the local professor here in North Carolina who I heard give radio talks right after 9/11 saying we Americans deserved the terrorist strike “shortly after Sept. 11,
What I find interesting is we see college textbooks such as John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar’s, Ecoscience yet in an essay, Ignoring Elites, Historians Are Missing a Major Factor in Politics and History Steve Fraser & Gary Gerstel: state “… Over the last quarter-century, historians have by and large ceased writing about the role of ruling elites in the country’s evolution. Or if they have taken up the subject, they have done so to argue against its salience for grasping the essentials of American political history. Yet there is something peculiar about this recent intellectual aversion….”
You also have Maurice Strong who squarely places “blame” on the middle class at the Rio Conference in 1992. “It is clear that current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class — involving high meat intake, consumption of large amounts of frozen and convenience foods, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work-place air-conditioning, and suburban housing — are not sustainable….”
Is it any wonder that many people hate the “affluent middle class” and consider it OK to kill them off? Seems that the “affluent middle class” have been made the scape goat for everything that goes wrong. I sure hope people wake up to the misdirection before more tragedies strike the innocent.
It’s sad, but telling, that many of the commenters on the “Think Progress” blog saw only Lee’s comments on immigration and not what he had to say about global warming, use of earth’s resources and militarism. The last three could have been lifted from any lefty blog. Obviously, he was a nut job, but I had to laugh when a brief screen shot of “Inconvenient Truth” was juxtaposed with the hostage crisis on–of all things–the CBS Evening News.
Anthony,
Your citation of my “Apocalypse Suckers” post headline as being guilty of similar insensitivity is odd. That post was written yesterday morning, well before the Lee incident became public (I personally didn’t hear about it till late afternoon). Additionally, it was playing off a magazine article; yours played off the raw emotion of violent act in progress.
If your point was to talk about Lee’s manifesto, you sure went about it the wrong way. I think you realize it now but can’t quite bring yourself to admit it.
The rest of you who see nothing wrong with the headline or the derogatory references to Gore, Hansen, et al are showing impressive powers of rationalization, especially when you point to the liberal comment thread carrying similarly derogatory references to conservatives.
1) Why are you giving this idiot’s ramblings any space at all? The media has demonstrated a perfect way to get kooky peoples’ idiocy looked at by everybody: Put your rants on a website, strap yourself with bombs, take hostages. Immediately your words are being read by the masses. Mission accomplished.
2) Why do you pay attention to MSNBC at all?
It seems the eco-loon warmenistas are in denial as to who and what Lee was – simply a reflection, albeit an extreme one, of themselves. I guess it can be tough to take, having a mirror held up and seeing evil staring back at you.