The poppy hasn't suddenly been co-opted. It's always been a little piece of propaganda.

The past 13 years have seen successive calls for former UK premier Tony Blair to be prosecuted for his part in the Iraq war. Has the Chilcot Report strengthened the potential legal case against him?

The view that one particular religious doctrine is uniquely extremist won’t help us to appreciate the cycles of brutality that feed on narratives of torture, murder and desecration. 

The unravelling of Iraqi society set the context for the emergence of the Islamic State-led insurgency in Iraq. But the role played by IS is a byproduct of the flows of capital and ideology in a much wider theatre of power. 

Kurdish nationalism in Iraqi-Kurdistan has been transformed from an ideology that strengthened resistance to the Iraqi Baathist dictatorship to a tool now being employed to help build shopping malls. 

Sir Jeremy Heywood was Principal Private Secretary to Tony Blair; he must not be the man to decide which conversations are to be made public at the Chilcot enquiry. Here is David Owen's full letter to David Cameron with accompanying note.