Discovery Channel hostage taker James Lee was author of eco-rant

[CardSharp]

Nutter takes over discovery channel building because he hated the way the channel covers the environment.

The headquarters of the Discovery Channel network, where police say James Lee took hostages today. Photograph: AP
James Lee, the man police identified as the gunman who entered the headquarters of the Discovery Channel and took a group of hostages, was a self-styled eco-warrior and author of a manifesto describing humans as "the most destructive, dirty, pollutive creatures" destroying the planet.

Lee waged a one-man campaign aimed at forcing the Discovery Channel to run programmes encouraging human sterilisation and wildlife preservation. In his manifesto, posted online and headlined: "The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet", Lee wrote:

Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more dirty 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!!!!
Among his other demands, Lee wanted the channel to stop "encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants" and that TV programmes instead encourage human sterilisation and infertility.

The Discovery network airs series such as Jon & Kate Plus 8, a reality TV show that followed a couple with sextuplets and twins, and 19 Kids and Counting, about a family of nine boys and 10 girls all born to the same parents.

In 2008 Lee was arrested and convicted for holding a week-long protest outside the Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring, Maryland, in which he hired homeless people to form a crowd, and threw around bundles of cash to encourage bystanders to join in.

At the time of his conviction in 2008, Lee was a 40-year-old identified as living in San Diego