The Anglo–Iraqi War was the British campaign against the rebel government of Rashid Ali in the Kingdom of Iraq during the Second World War. The war lasted from 2 to 31 May 1941. The campaign resulted in the re-occupation of Iraq by British armed forces and the return to power of the ousted pro-British regent of Iraq, Prince 'Abd al-Ilah. The campaign further fuelled nationalist resentment in Iraq toward the British-supported Hashemite monarchy.

The Kingdom of Iraq (also referred to as Mesopotamia) was governed by the United Kingdom under a League of Nations mandate, the British Mandate of Mesopotamia, until 1932 when Iraq became nominally independent. Before granting independence, the United Kingdom concluded the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930. This treaty had several conditions, which included permission to establish military bases for British use and provide all facilities for the unrestricted movement of British forces through the country upon request to the Iraqi government. The conditions of the treaty were imposed by the United Kingdom to ensure continued control of Iraq's petroleum resources. Many Iraqis resented these conditions and felt that their country and its monarchy were still under the effective control of the British Government.

Rashad Salim (also known as Rashad Selim, born 1957 in Khartoum, Sudan) is an Iraqi-London based artist and activist.

Born in Khartoum, Sudan to a German mother and Iraqi father, Salim had travelled widely before settling in Iraq in 1971. He studied graphic arts at the Institute of Fine Arts at Baghdad in 1980, soon after he moved to London to begin his studies in audio visuals at St Martin’s School of Art in 1983. During the years 1977 and 1978, Salim was a member on the Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl’s reed-boat expedition from the river Tigris to Djibouti.

His work is heavily influenced by his travels and residencies, these include the cultural sphere of Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen and the United Kingdom. Salim's career involves teaching and act as an art advisor for the United Nations.

He comes from an artistic family, for his uncle was late Jawad Salim, a pioneer of modern art in Iraq and is a junior member of the Selim Dynasty of artists. He is also a member of the Strokes of Genius project.

Salim lives and works in England.

Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries. In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, which documented his personal quest to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections. He has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth.

Moore criticizes globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the Iraq War, the American health care system, and capitalism in his written and cinematic works.

Moore was born in Flint, Michigan, and raised in Davison, a suburb of Flint, by parents Veronica (née Wall), a secretary, and Frank Moore, an automotive assembly-line worker. At that time, the city of Flint was home to many General Motors factories, where his parents and grandfather worked. His uncle LaVerne was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint Sit-Down Strike.

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch", was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.

Jonathan David Anthony Bowden (April 12, 1962 - March 29, 2012) was a British political figure who had been involved with a number of political parties and groups, and a leading speaker on the nationalist circuit. His great influence was the novelist, Bill Hopkins, who had been one of the Angry Young Men of the 1950s.

Bowden was born in Kent and was educated at Presentation College, Reading, Berkshire. In 1983-4 he completed one year of a B.A. history course at London University's Birkbeck College, but then left. He began his political career as a member of the Conservative Party in the Tower Hamlets association, in the Shoreditch and Stepney Green constituency. In October 1990 (until 1992) he joined the Monday Club, where the following year he made an unsuccessful bid to stand for its Executive Council. In May 1991, he was appointed co-chairman, with Stuart Millson, of the Club's Media Committee. During the early 1990s, he stated that he had been the deputy chairman of the Western Goals Institute although this cannot be verified.