n an interview for Guardian Unlimited's Voices on Iraq project www.theguardian.com/iraq/voices, Noam Chomsky said: "There's never been a time that I can think of when there's been such massive opposition to a war before it was even started."
This ground-swell of public sentiment against an attack on Iraq quickly became evident on the web. We decided to set up a special report on the anti-war movement as a home for Guardian Unlimited's news stories, comment and analysis about opposition to war. The guide to anti-war websites was set up to provide a permanent information source for people wanting to find out more about anti-war groups, not just protests against an Iraq conflict.
I decided to give my email address so people could suggest other sites. I've done this kind of thing before. When I wrote a guide to household recycling I got less than a dozen responses to my requests for information on schemes I had omitted.
So I wasn't expecting to arrive at work the day after the anti-war websites guide had gone live to find two dozen messages waiting for me, all suggesting links. I have now had more than 350 emails since the guide went live on January 28. In fact, several more messages have arrived since I started typing this.
Guardian Unlimited's global audience was reflected in the range of nationalities represented in my now-bulging inbox: Americans, Belgians, Australians, Irish, Swiss and Bermudans, among others.
Some of the sites nominated featured organisations set up decades ago, such as War Resisters International and CND. Others were only months - or even weeks - old: for example www.humanshields.org was set up after activist Ken Nichols O'Keefe posted a message on the alternative news network www.indymedia.org saying he was going to drive to Baghdad with a friend to act as a human shield. Within days he had dozens of people clamouring to go with them. The viral power of the internet turned what started as a two-person protest into a global movement for peace.
At the centre of many of the sites is a simple idea that utilises the web's plus points rather than aping traditional media outlets. For example, www.poetsagainstthewar.org has produced a series of electronic chapbooks of anti-war poetry available as pdfs to be emailed or printed out and passed on. Waketheworld.org was set up a week ago to provide downloadable posters for anti-war protesters and allow people to submit their own designs. The site received more than 30 new posters last weekend.
Humour also plays an important role: this "error page" is one of the more subtle sites I was sent, while several sites make clever use of Flash, like Mark Fiore's and www.takebackthemedia.com. The list goes on. And on.
About five or six of the messages I received asked why I had not included pro-war sites. The reason was that the guide was set up as part of a special report on sites about the anti-war movement, rather than as a general information resource about the Iraq conflict: we already have special reports on Iraq and on the military, which include a range of links to sites about war on Iraq.
However, I plan to set up a separate page to house some of the prominent pro-war sites, not least those of the warbloggers, such as www. andrewsullivan.com, www. instapundit.com and www.blogsofwar.com. (In the endlessly referential world of blogging, there is, of course, a blog that watches the warbloggers: warbloggerwatch.blogspot.com.
Pro-war websites seem thin on the ground; search for "war" and "Iraq" and you'll scroll through reams of protest sites but few that back military action. Americans for Victory over Terrorism, which presents pro-war comment, analysis and news, is one exception. Another is Patriots for the Defence of America, which describes itself as "a national activist organisation promoting moral clarity on the war".
People also emailed me to suggest sites that gave users the opportunity to debate the rights and wrongs of war without presenting its own stance, such as War Debate, On the Railings and OpenDemocracy.
This brings me back to where I started: the growing public doubt about the morality of an attack on Iraq. Anti-war arguments debated online were made manifest in the physical world last weekend as millions of people joined more than 600 peace protests around the globe.
Meanwhile, the emails keep coming and the pages will continue to expand. I am trying to keep up with the demand. Speaking of which, I'd better get back to work.
