Of cardboard buns and terrorism
It turns out—if we believe the words of Beijing authorities—that the cardboard steamed buns story was a hoax. The AP reports: A freelance reporter for a Beijing television station has been detained for faking a hidden camera report about street vendors who used chemical-soaked cardboard to fill meat buns, local media said. […] Beijing Television ...
It turns out—if we believe the words of Beijing authorities—that the cardboard steamed buns story was a hoax. The AP reports:
It turns out—if we believe the words of Beijing authorities—that the cardboard steamed buns story was a hoax. The AP reports:
A freelance reporter for a Beijing television station has been detained for faking a hidden camera report about street vendors who used chemical-soaked cardboard to fill meat buns, local media said. […]
Beijing Television explained that an investigation revealed that in mid-June, Zi brought meat, flour, cardboard and other ingredients to a downtown Beijing neighborhood and had four migrant workers make the buns for him while he filmed the process. It said Zi ''gave them the idea'' of mincing softened cardboard and adding it to the buns.
Let's assume this is true. Does it let the migrant workers off the hook? Or does it provide further evidence that Chinese food-safety standards are hopelessly lax?
I ask because this incident reminds me of—bear with me here—the FBI's efforts to nab al Qaeda operatives in the United States. Undercover FBI agents have run several sting operations wherein they target people whom informants have identified as having extremist tendencies and recruit them into fake al Qaeda cells. The FBI then catches them expressing sympathy for Osama Bin Laden, buying weapons, or sending money to terrorists abroad, and then arrests them. Critics of these operations say they amount to entrapment. These people aren't really joining al Qaeda at all, the critics say, and are being prosecuted for mere "thought crimes." Supporters of the sting approach counter that at the end of the day, guys like Tarik Shah and the Lackawanna Six are making clear their intention to commit terrorist acts, so we might as well get them off the streets while we can.
If you agree with that logic, do you also think the bun-makers are guilty of knowingly stuffing buns with cardboard, and should be punished? Email Passport with your thoughts.
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