Thought the anti-imperialist left was upside down on Israel? This marks a new low. I might be open to a call for ending "sanctions against Zimbabwe" (knowing little about them) if there were some reasonable alternative offered. Humanitarian intervention? Never for these folks. Their best is "Let’s hope that President Robert Mugabe and the Zanu-PF will live up to the expectations and this crisis will only be a bad memory!" (Their exclamation point!) I doubt by "crisis" they're referring to the whole of Mugabe's rule. And so the call to end sanctions can't be understood as anything but support for Robert Mugabe.
Do read comment 5, btw. "First, there are no economic sanctions against Zimbabwe... There are sanctions against named Zimbabweans - the leaders of ZANU-PF and their spouses and associates. The main impact of these sanctions is that Grace Mugabe cannot go shopping at Harrods." I've already admitted to knowing relatively little about the international response to Mugabe, but the US sanctions -which are indeed against "named persons and entities"- can be found here. I trust no one will mind if I don't go searching for Britain's sanctions, though they're more specifically at issue.
I'm not surprised to find Jean Ziegler among the signatories. Among other oddities, he's called biofuels "a crime against humanity." He's more famous for similarly unhinged attacks against Israel that have become rote in the anti-Zionist cause. And for co-founding the Gaddafi Human Rights Prize, which he himself shared -he turned it down, but not for reasons the sane might expect- with Holocaust denier Roger Gaurady in 2002.
Long-short: Fortunately, there are other Lefts.
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