Discovery Channel HQ hostages freed as gunman shot dead
BBC News
1 September 2010
"Police chief Thomas Manger: "There are other suspected devices in the building"
A gunman who took three hostages at the Discovery Communications headquarters in the US has been shot dead by police and his captives have been set free.
The man had canisters strapped to his chest and a handgun when he entered the building near Washington DC, police said.
Officers opened fire because they thought the gunman was about to detonate his explosives, they added.
The police had held several hours of talks with the man.
Discovery employees were evacuated from the building shortly after the incident began at about 1700 GMT.
The area around the building in Silver Spring, Maryland, was sealed off as police negotiated with the man. After several hours, police began to fear for the safety of the hostages, said Montgomery County Police Chief J Thomas Manger.
He said a man had entered the Discovery headquarters through the main entrance wearing what appeared to be "metallic canisters" on his clothes.
The man then pulled out a handgun and told everyone to remain still.
Unnamed police officials quoted by the US media named the gunman as James Jay Lee, a man in his 40s known for protesting outside the building.
The US broadcaster NBC reported that one of their producers had a brief telephone conversation with the gunman while he was holding the hostages.
The man came on the line unexpectedly when the journalist called the Discovery Communications building to find out what was going on.
NBC reported that the gunman identified himself as James J Lee and said: "I have a gun and I have a bomb. I have several bombs strapped to my body ready to go off."
Demands
A man called James Lee of San Diego, California, was arrested outside Discovery's headquarters in 2008 after throwing thousands of dollars into the air in protest against the network, according to The Gazette, a local newspaper.
Mr Lee said he threw the money because Discovery's programming had little to do with saving the planet.
He reportedly was also the author of the website savetheplanetprotest.com, where he demanded that the Discovery Channel broadcast programmes that would help "to save the planet".
A spokesman for Discovery Communications said the company had known the gunman before this incident but "not taken his threats or demands seriously".
Discovery Communications reaches 1.5bn subscribers in 180 countries through networks like Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and the Science Channel."
Author denies Discovery gunman James Lee's interpretation of 'My Ishmael'
Washington Post
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
"The gunman who took hostages at Discovery Communications' headquarters in Silver Spring was apparently inspired by the author of a popular series about a telepathic ape who tries to save humankind from problems such as overpopulation, but the writer said Wednesday that he is baffled by James J. Lee's interpretation of his book.
Daniel Quinn, 75, wrote a four-book series including "My Ishmael," the 1997 novel Lee mentioned as the first in his list of 11 demands. In an online manifesto, Lee said the Discovery Channel "must" run daily, prime-time shows "based on" a six-page passage of the novel in which Ishmael and his 12-year-old apprentice discuss the Industrial Revolution and why humans were so creative and resourceful during that period.
The shows, Lee wrote, would focus on "solutions to save the planet . . . 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."
Quinn, who worked in publishing before a literary career that included more than a dozen books, sounded stunned as he spoke from his home in Houston. As calls from reporters came in, he re-read the pages of his book. He said he was in the middle of a physical therapy session when he heard of the hostage-taking and Lee's reference to "My Ishmael."
Quinn's books are extremely popular, if difficult to categorize. They have been translated into 25 languages and are taught in courses ranging from English to philosophy to anthropology. Quinn said the series aims to "teach" readers to question what they've been told about human history and human nature.
He criticized the typical school system that "sends children to a prison and isolates them from their parents, as though before that, children didn't have educations. They had perfect educations by . . . being with their parents all the time."
Hesitant to characterize his own goals, Quinn said, "I'm just trying to get people to think."
Although Quinn does write about the "race between food production and population growth," he said Lee "had become a fanatic" and warped his beliefs and words. Quinn said, "I've never said anything remotely like" what Lee said about preventing the birth of children.
"He's exaggerated what I've said," Quinn said. "I've seen many people take off in odd directions from things they've seen in my books, but nothing so catastrophic as someone arming himself with bombs and guns. . . . I know this will have a big effect on my books themselves. Sales might zoom up, but that doesn't mean approval of it will zoom up. It might zoom down."
In the passage Lee mentions, Ishmael explains to 12-year-old Julie how people can draw inspiration from the basic creativity that human beings have shown throughout history. Ishmael praises "the wealth of human inventiveness that was generated by the Industrial Revolution." "I'm not recommending its goals or its shameful features - its relentless materialism, its appalling wastefulness, its enormous appetite for irreplaceable resources," he says. "I'm recommending only its mode of operation, which released the greatest and most democratic outpouring of human creativity in human history."
The biggest obstacle to this explosion of creativity, the two agree, is "the government."
"That's what governments are there for, to keep good things from happening," Ishmael says. "But if you can't even manage to force your own presumably democratic governments to allow you to do good things for yourselves, then you probably deserve to become extinct."
Asked about the current status of the species, Quinn worried about the planet's growing population. "We're obviously in deep trouble," he said.
A minute later, someone came into the room in his house and fixed the author's television, just as the news announced that Lee had been shot. Quinn let out what sounded like a laugh of relief. "So it's all over?""
No comments:
Post a Comment