SHOTLIST: LONDON, UK (SEPTEMBER 23, 2025) (ANADOLU - ACCESS ALL) 1. VARIOUS OF NATIONAL OFFICER OF THE STOP THE WAR COALITION AND FOUNDER JOHN REES, FORMER LABOUR LEADER JEREMY CORBYN AND MUSICIAN BRIAN ENO ATTENDING PRESS CONFERENCE IN LONDON LONDON, UK - SEPTEMBER 23, 2025: An alliance of politicians, trade unionists, campaigners and artists will convene in Paris next month to call for a different path as European governments ramp up defense spending in response to the war in Ukraine and rising global insecurity. The International Peace Conference aims to challenge what organizers said is continent-wide militarization that threatens to divert vital resources from education, health care and social welfare. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and musician Brian Eno will join the peace conference opposing a “Trump-mandated European rearmament program.” Organizers argue that the accelerated militarization is draining resources from public services and fueling the arms industry’s profits. The initiative is spearheaded by John Rees, national officer of the Stop the War Coalition and founder of the left-wing group, Counterfire. “Almost without exception … European governments have launched a continent-wide rearmament program, which is authoring the social priorities of Europe as a whole,” he said at a news conference Tuesday organized by the Foreign Press Association in London. Rees warned that military spending was set to overtake education budgets in some countries. “Only a few years ago, arms spending (in the UK) was 2.5% and education 5% of GDP. Now we are heading to 5% on arms and just 3.5% on education. There is absolutely no doubt where the money is coming from -- the arms companies are already benefiting massively.” - 'Arms spending doesn’t bring peace' Corbyn, a longstanding anti-war campaigner, drew historical parallels with the run-up to World War !. “In the late 19th and early 20th century, there was a massive growth of peace movements across Europe … but then a series of interlocking mutual defense agreements ended up with the First World War,” he said. He linked the issue to current global conflicts, citing wars in Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Yemen and West Papua. “Arms spending doesn’t bring peace. It usually brings an increasing danger and more conflict as a result of it,” he warned. Corbyn criticized Western states for supplying weapons to Israel. “It is worse than a Pyrrhic victory that the Palestinian people have gained recognition amidst death in the pile of rubble and acts of genocide,” he said, referring to recent European recognition of Palestinian statehood. Eno, a prominent supporter of progressive causes, framed the arms race as a distortion of democratic priorities. “Weapons building is a way of a government being able to have a command economy at the center of what should be a free market economy,” he said. “It’s a deceit … a way of siphoning money off from society into fewer and fewer pockets.” Corbyn argued that the choice facing Europe was stark. “We could go down the road of immense levels of profitability for the arms industry, or we could do something different. We could recognize that the causes of war are greed, natural resources and global injustice. And we could begin to build a more peaceful world,” he said. ​​​​​​​