NEW YORK: Dozens of artists including Roger Waters called Monday on Radiohead to cancel a concert in Israel, saying the band known for its left-wing politics should join Palestinian activists’ boycott calls.
The English experimental rock icons are scheduled to play in Tel Aviv on July 19, closing a tour that includes premier festivals Coachella and Glastonbury.
Radiohead has played benefits for Tibetans’ rights and Amnesty International and the battle against climate change. “Since Radiohead campaigns for freedom for the Tibetans, we’re wondering why you’d turn down a request to stand up for another people under foreign occupation,” the letter said.
“In asking you not to perform in Israel, Palestinians have appealed to you to take one small step to help pressure Israel to end its violation of basic rights and international law.
“Surely if making a stand against the politics of division, of discrimination and of hate means anything at all, it means standing against it everywhere — and that has to include what happens to Palestinians every day,” it said.
Waters, the former Pink Floyd member and creative force of “The Wall,” has long been outspoken on Israel.
Other signatories included novelists Alice Walker and Hari Kunzru, Thurston Moore of US alternative rock pioneers Sonic Youth and Nick Seymour of Australian rockers Crowded House.
Retired bishop and Nobel Prize-winning anti-apartheid campaigner Desmond Tutu also signed the letter.
A cultural boycott campaign against Israel has had mixed success. Stevie Wonder, Carlos Santana and Lauryn Hill have scrapped shows in Israel but plenty of major names including Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Elton John and Bon Jovi have performed in recent years.
Israel’s defenders have denounced the boycott campaign as hypocritical, saying the democratic country has been singled out when some prominent musicians are willing to play in dictatorships.
Radiohead has not played Israel since 2000. That concert was part of a now-legendary Mediterranean swing where Radiohead previewed songs from “Kid A,” often called the band’s masterpiece, which were swapped online before the album’s release.
Radiohead urged to scrap Israel gig and stand up for Palestine
Radiohead urged to scrap Israel gig and stand up for Palestine
These shy, scaly anteaters are the most trafficked mammals in the world
CAPE TOWN, South Africa: They are hunted for their unique scales, and the demand makes them the most trafficked mammal in the world.
Wildlife conservationists are again raising the plight of pangolins, the shy, scaly anteaters found in parts of Africa and Asia, on World Pangolin Day on Saturday.
Pangolins or pangolin products outstrip any other mammal when it comes to wildlife smuggling, with more than half a million pangolins seized in anti-trafficking operations between 2016 and 2024, according to a report last year by CITES, the global authority on the trading of endangered plant and animal species.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates that over a million pangolins were taken from the wild over the last decade, including those that were never intercepted.
Pangolins meat is a delicacy in places, but the driving force behind the illegal trade is their scales, which are made of keratin, the protein also found in human hair and fingernails. The scales are in high demand in China and other parts of Asia due to the unproven belief that they cure a range of ailments when made into traditional medicine.
There are eight pangolin species, four in Africa and four in Asia. All of them face a high, very high or extremely high risk of extinction.
While they’re sometimes known as scaly anteaters, pangolins are not related in any way to anteaters or armadillos.
They are unique in that they are the only mammals covered completely in keratin scales, which overlap and have sharp edges. They are the perfect defense mechanism, allowing a pangolin to roll up into an armored ball that even lions struggle to get to grip with, leaving the nocturnal ant and termite eaters with few natural predators.
But they have no real defense against human hunters. And in conservation terms, they don’t resonate in the way that elephants, rhinos or tigers do despite their fascinating intricacies — like their sticky insect-nabbing tongues being almost as long as their bodies.
While some reports indicate a downward trend in pangolin trafficking since the COVID-19 pandemic, they are still being poached at an alarming rate across parts of Africa, according to conservationists.
Nigeria is one of the global hot spots. There, Dr. Mark Ofua, a wildlife veterinarian and the West Africa representative for the Wild Africa conservation group, has rescued pangolins for more than a decade, which started with him scouring bushmeat markets for animals he could buy and save. He runs an animal rescue center and a pangolin orphanage in Lagos.
His mission is to raise awareness of pangolins in Nigeria through a wildlife show for kids and a tactic of convincing entertainers, musicians and other celebrities with millions of social media followers to be involved in conservation campaigns — or just be seen with a pangolin.
Nigeria is home to three of the four African pangolin species, but they are not well known among the country’s 240 million people.
Ofua’s drive for pangolin publicity stems from an encounter with a group of well-dressed young men while he was once transporting pangolins he had rescued in a cage. The men pointed at them and asked him what they were, Ofua said.
“Oh, those are baby dragons,” he joked. But it got him thinking.
“There is a dark side to that admission,” Ofua said. “If people do not even know what a pangolin looks like, how do you protect them?”
