China’s robotic “Prime Minister” (elected by nobody) Wen Jiabao had a shoe thrown at him while giving a speech in Cambridge, England.

The protester leapt from his seat near the back of a crowded auditorium at Cambridge University, blew a whistle and yelled that Wen was a “dictator” before throwing a shoe toward the stage.
“How can this university prostitute itself with this dictator here, how can you listen … to him unchallenged,” the man shouted.
Security staff escorted the young man, who was not Chinese, from the auditorium.

Sino-fascists in the blogosphere have been quick to scotch any attempts at moral equivalence between this incident and the Iraqi shoe-throwing.

“The uncompromising Iraqi people threw a shoe at Bush which is a brave act by a suppressed nation,” said one comment on the tiexue.net bulletin board. “But the ugly Englishman threw a shoe at Wen, which was only a barbaric trick.”

Perhaps that well-known second stanza of the British National Anthem could be updated to reflect this latest craze:

Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
At them our shoes we pitch,
God save us all!