40% of their ‘students' are from Mexico, and there is no small connection between the repression in Oaxaca, the repression that lead to the death of my friend Brad Will, and this shop of horrors in Fort Benning. Upon arriving in the quaint, small town near the fort, where every other business is a ‘Title Shop' which will buy the title to your house or car in exchange for instant cash - testament to the extreme poverty of the region - we discovered that parallel to the SOA protest will be a counter rally, organized by the military, called ‘God Bless Fort Benning Day.'

Much to our surprise, our first day of production found us diving into this carnival of fundamentalism and militarism, a strange mixture of merry-go-rounds and tanks. Children playing with real submachine guns, under the benevolent eye of fatherly soldiers. ‘Climb inside the tank and pull the trigger! Step right up!' A man dressed as an Arab barbarian wandering around with a sword, which he would hand to the children, positioning at his throat for a photo opportunity. "Kill the arab!" Our first interview was with Reverend Wiggins, a local baptist preacher, who explained that God is on the side of these soldiers, who are defending this country, defending freedom. He has compassion for the rest of humanity, it is clear - all they need to do is be saved. Saved within the context of his specific brand of chrisitianity - all the other denominations will still send you to hell. There is a righteous certainity, unswayable, unstoppable.

A Christian biker explained to me that we're in the final days of the armageddon, and those who are not saved will be ‘left behind'. He, like everyone we spoke to this day, believed that Jesus will literally come down on a cloud and call the chosen few, who will evaporate, leaving being a pile of clothes and the rest of us to burn in torment. With this kind of a mindset, there is no motivation to care for the planet, to care for each other, to protect the environment - why bother when the true believers will be going to heavan. It is a terrifying righteousness, an absolute intolerance. And yet, these are not bad people. The christian bikers drive the highways helping people who have broken down, and passing on ‘'the good word' of christ. They easily identified themselves as spiritual activists. They have compassion for the rest of humanity - we're just wrong thinking. Their heart bleeds for us, and they wish that we would accept the good lord (their specific version of the good lord), and be saved.

Variations of this style of Christianity has wreaked havoc on the lives of people across the globe, abusing religious certitude in the worst possible way, backed by Manifest Destiny and genocidal arrogance. Superimpose images of inquisitions, of burnings at stakes, of native genocide in the name of Christ, and today, the Western global dominance of a Military Industrial Complex that claims allegiance to ‘Christian values,' while bombing the hell out of anyone that gets in the way, building toxic factories in third world countries, laying waste to cultures in the name of progress. As much as I disagree with the extreme atheism of Richard Dawkins, it is the kind of thinking we encountered here that encourages such an extreme counter reaction.

Tomorrow we'll be at the School of the Americas protest, a peaceful demonstration propelled by Christians of another stripe, who draw inspiration from the heart of the Christian teachings, which I believe can be found in the sermon on the mount where Christ implored us to turn the other cheek, to transform our swords into plowshares. Covet not thy neighbor's resources. The question on my mind is: who would Jesus bomb?