SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
For Immediate Release
January, 21 2021, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Joe Karp-Sawey, media manager,Tel: +44 (0)7711 875 345,Email:,joe.karpsawey@globaljustice.org.uk
Campaigners Condemn Decision to Make South Africa Pay More Than Double European Price for Astra Zeneca Vaccine, as Cases Soar
"As cases spread, mutations will continue to manifest and threaten all of our efforts to contain this disease. The unfair patent system is now one the biggest obstacles to defeating this virus."
WASHINGTON
Campaigners have said it is "deeply alarming" that South Africa is reportedly being charged nearly 2.5 times the price paid by most European countries for Oxford-AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine, claiming such inequality is now a core obstacle to controlling coronavirus.[1]
South Africa's government is struggling to buy vaccines as cases soar in the country. Most vaccines have been pre-purchased by rich countries, with the international distribution mechanism, COVAX, desperate for funds to buy vaccines. South Africa has recently managed to obtain 1.5 million vaccine doses bilaterally to treat its health workers, but it was reported yesterday that the government had been charged $5.25 per dose, while EU members are believed to be paying just $2.16 per shot. AstraZeneca previously promised to cap prices at $3 per dose.
The report came on the day it was revealed the World Health Organisation initiative to share the science and know-how for coronavirus medicines had received no contributions. Campaigners said it had effectively been boycotted by Big Pharma and rich governments.[2]
Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said:
"South Africa's desperate predicament is a symptom of the shocking failure of rich countries to deal with this virus in a fair and effective manner. Like many African countries, cases are soaring in South Africa, yet many countries will find a European-style lockdown impossible. As cases spread, mutations will continue to manifest and threaten all of our efforts to contain this disease. The unfair patent system is now one the biggest obstacles to defeating this virus.
"We are calling on Astra Zeneca to explain how this pricing has happened, given their promise to cap charges. This is the problem when you have essential medicines in the hands of big business, with almost no transparency as to pricing. We urgently need technology and patents placed in public hands, so we can share this knowledge and produce more vaccines now. Our ability to defeat this virus fairly and effectively depends upon it."
Notes:
Global Justice Now is a democratic social justice organisation working as part of a global movement to challenge the powerful and create a more just and equal world. We mobilise people in the UK for change, and act in solidarity with those fighting injustice, particularly in the global south.
020 7820 4900LATEST NEWS
'Profoundly Damning': NYT Report Says Netanyahu Prolonged War on Gaza to Stay in Power
"He pressed ahead with the war in April and July 2024, even as top generals told him that there was no further military advantage to continuing," reports The New York Times.
Jul 11, 2025
An explosive new report from The New York Times flatly contends that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has "prolonged the war in Gaza" to stay in power and avoid potential criminal prosecution.
The Times' reporting reveals that Netanyahu in April 2024 was close to signing off on a six-week cease-fire proposal that would have led to the release of more than 30 hostages captured by Hamas six months earlier and "would have created a window for negotiations with Hamas over a permanent truce."
However, Netanyahu abruptly changed course when Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a hardliner who has long demanded the reestablishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza, warned Netanyahu he and his allies would quit their coalition government if any cease-fire deal were reached. Such a move would collapse the coalition and force new elections, which polls at the time suggested Netanyahu would lose.
According to the Times, the Israeli prime minister tossed the cease-fire proposal away and kept the war grinding on until this very day, even expanding military operations into nations such as Lebanon and Iran.
"Under political pressure from those coalition allies, Netanyahu slowed down cease-fire negotiations at crucial moments, missing windows in which Hamas was less opposed to a deal," the Times writes. "He avoided planning for a postwar power transition, making it harder to direct the war toward an endgame. He pressed ahead with the war in April and July 2024, even as top generals told him that there was no further military advantage to continuing. When momentum toward a cease-fire seemed to grow, Netanyahu ascribed sudden significance to military objectives that he previously seemed less interested in pursuing, such as the capture of the southern city Rafah and later the occupation of the Gaza-Egypt border. And when an extended cease-fire was finally forged in January, he broke the truce in March in part to keep his coalition intact."
The report also details American efforts to persuade Netanyahu that he would politically benefit by reaching a cease-fire deal that would release hostages by referencing opinion polls showing that more than 50% of Israeli voters would back such a move.
"Not 50% of my voters," Netanyahu responded, according to the Times' sources.
The toll taken on Palestinians in Gaza has been horrific. At least 57,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed as a result of Israel's war, and researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine said earlier this year that it's possible the actual number of civilians killed is significantly higher than that. Additionally, civilians in Gaza are facing widespread food insecurity and even run the risk of getting shot by the Israeli military while standing in line to receive food.
The report on Netanyahu's maneuvers to prolong the Gaza war drew a disgusted reaction from Ron Ben-Tovim, a senior lecturer at the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel.
"I no longer know if there's anything that will bring down this government, but an investigation showing how and when exactly Netanyahu prolonged a baseless war of destruction to stay in power should end his political career," he wrote on X.
Joel Swanson, a scholar of modern Jewish intellectual history at Sarah Lawrence College, similarly expressed his disgust with Netanyahu.
"Everything in this report is just so profoundly damning of Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the worst and cruelest world leaders of our age," he wrote on Bluesky.
Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, argued that the Times report also delivered a damning portrayal of former U.S. President Joe Biden.
"Portraying Biden as feckless and cranky at constantly being conned by Netanyahu really undersells his culpability," he wrote on X. "Netanyahu couldn't have massacred Gaza and revived his political career without Biden’s total support, which Biden chose to give."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Federal Agents Spray Tear Gas at Protesters, Children During ICE Raids at California Farms
"ICE was conducting a raid using disproportionate displays of force against local farmworkers and our agricultural community," said U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal, who was denied entry to one farm where he was attempting to provide oversight.
Jul 11, 2025
Federal immigration agents were met with a strong show of resistance Thursday when they raided two farms in Southern California—with hundreds of community members protesting the arrests of migrants at the facilities growing cannabis and vegetables.
Los Angeles-based independent journalist Mel Buer reported that hundreds of community members gathered to protest the raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at Glass House Farms' facility in Camarillo, Ventura County, and supporters dropped "hundreds of pounds of water, food, and masks."
Local news outlet KTLA reported that "dozens of farmworkers were detained" in the raids at Glass House Farms' properties in Camarillo and Carpinteria.
Federal law enforcement first arrived in Camarillo at about 11:00 am, and the situation escalated as a crowd of community members gathered.
The federal agents first deployed tear gas into the crowd early Thursday afternoon.
Ventura County District 5 Supervisor Vianey Lopez told KTLA that as the federal agents used force on the protesters, she saw two government vans, each carrying about 15 people, leaving the farm.
"It is an ongoing situation that is very concerning for the safety of those showing up with anger and disappointment at what is happening to hardworking people in our community," Lopez said.
The immigration enforcement agents were joined by National Guard troops in military vehicles later that afternoon in Camarillo, according to The Guardian, as other federal agents carried out a simultaneous raid in Carpinteria, about 50 miles northwest in Santa Barbara County.
Carpinteria City Council members Julia Mayer and Mónica Solórzano were among a large crowd of community members who gathered to protest the raid, and they told the Santa Barbara Independent that federal officers "pushed us as a group into the ground" and threw at least one smoke grenade, causing Solórzano to injure her arm.
U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.), who represents Santa Barbara County and part of Ventura County, released a statement condemning the ICE raid and saying he had been "denied entry and not allowed to pass" when he attempted to "conduct oversight" over the raid targeting his constituents in Carpinteria.
"ICE was conducting a raid using disproportionate displays of force against local farmworkers and our agricultural community," said Carbajal. "There's been a troubling lack of transparency from ICE since the Trump administration started, and I won't stop asking questions on behalf of my constituents."
Carbajal is now one of several Democratic elected officials who have been denied the ability to oversee ICE operations. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) pleaded not guilty last month to forcibly interfering with federal officers—charges that stemmed from her attempt to conduct congressional oversight at an ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey.
"These militarized ICE raids are not how you keep our communities safe. This kind of chaos only traumatizes families and tears communities apart. They are also a gross misuse of limited resources and a betrayal of the values that define us as Americans," said Carbajal, who noted that the identities of those detained in the raids had not been made clear.
In Camarillo, a resident named Judith Ramos told The Guardian that she had learned from her father, who worked in Glass House Farms' tomato fields, that "immigration was outside his job" on Thursday morning.
Ramos, a 22-year-old certified nurse assistant with two younger siblings, said her father told her "to take care of everything" if he was detained by ICE.
She was sprayed with a chemical substance when she arrived at the farm and joined the crowd of protesters, and told The Guardian that she did not know where her father was.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has clashed with President Donald Trump and filed a lawsuit against the administration last month over its federalization of the California National Guard to respond to protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles, posted a video showing children running from the federal agents.
"Trump calls me 'Newscum,'" said the governor, "but he's the real scum."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Self-Enrichment': JD Vance Stands to Profit From Trump Military Contracts, Crypto Reserve
Financial disclosures analyzed by Accountable.US reveal that the vice president is invested in several defense contractors that have reaped lavish contracts since Trump's return to office.
Jul 11, 2025
The Trump administration has given contracts to four defense contractors that Vice President JD Vance has a financial stake in, according to a report by the government watchdog group Accountable.US.
Financial disclosure forms published by the Office of Government Ethics for June 2025 reveal that through at least the end of 2024—the last date at which he was required to disclose his investments—Vance had anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000 invested in Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based venture capital group he helped to found before taking office.
Rise of the Rest is invested in at least four military contractors that have since received large contracts from the Trump-Vance administration. Two of them received those contracts—worth millions of dollars—within two weeks of Trump beginning his second term.
Hermeus, the maker of hypersonic aircraft, received a contract worth $9.36 million from the Department of Defense in February. Another company, Slingshot Aerospace, has been awarded $1.7 million in contracts from the Air Force. The report notes that Slingshot's tools, which include GPS monitoring technology, have been used in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The most lucrative company in Vance's portfolio is Anduril, which has received an eye-popping $220 million in government contracts since Trump and Vance took office and seen a 125% increase in its valuation.
It is expected to reap massive new contracts from the so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" that Trump signed into law earlier this month through its creation of expansive new border surveillance technology.
As Sam Biddle reported for The Intercept on Wednesday, the bill includes language that effectively grants Anduril "a monopoly on new surveillance towers for U.S. Customs and Border Protection":
A provision buried in the new mega-legislation stipulates that none of the $6 billion border tech payday can be spent on border towers unless they've been "tested and accepted by [CBP] to deliver autonomous capabilities."…
That reads like a description of Anduril's product—because it might as well be. A CBP spokesperson confirmed to The Intercept that under the new law, Anduril is now the country's only approved border tower vendor.
Anduril is also reportedly one of the main firms in contention for contracts to help build Trump's $175 billion "Golden Dome" security system.
Vance left Revolution in 2020 to start his own venture capital firm, Narya Capital, and two of the companies received investments from his previous firm after his departure. However, Vance directly acknowledged that he had a financial stake in all four of them on a Senate financial disclosure form in 2023, "indicating awareness of the investments," according to Accountable.US.
The Rise of the Rest Seed Fund presents other potential conflicts of interest as well. In addition to its investments in the defense industry, it has also been a major backer of The Bitcoin Company, providing it with more than $2.1 million in seed money in 2022.
Vance himself is a major Bitcoin enthusiast. His disclosures reveal that he personally holds anywhere from $250,000 to $500,000 worth of the cryptocurrency.
During his time in the White House, President Donald Trump has launched initiatives meant to supercharge the cryptocurrency industry, including a "Strategic Bitcoin Reserve," which sent the digital currency's price soaring in March.
Accountability.US executive director Tony Carrk describes Vance's financial entanglements as part of a broader pattern within the Trump administration.
"Vance's background and investments in companies benefiting from Trump government contracts come as no surprise given this administration’s record of benefiting themselves while raising costs and gutting health care for hardworking Americans," he said.
Past reports by the group have highlighted the president's own profiteering from cryptocurrency and other financial ventures. And last month, an investigation revealed that Donald Trump, Jr. also stood to profit tremendously from the "Golden Dome" project via his own investments in Anduril and Elon Musk's company SpaceX.
"As much as the Trump administration claims to be draining the swamp, their conflicts of interest, self-enrichment, and ties to special interests show they are creatures of it," said Caark. "Vice President JD Vance is no exception."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular