A slideshow that officials with The Kentucky State Police decided to show to young cadets promoted violence and used quotes from problematic figures such as Adolf Hitler and Robert E. Lee. The presentation was titled “The Warrior Mindset,” and encouraged cadets to become “the loving father, spouse, and friend as well as the ruthless killer.”

The slideshow was obtained by an attorney in Kentucky named David Ward, who filed an open records request on behalf of the Adams Landenwich Walton law firm as part of a lawsuit. The lawsuit was regarding the death of a man who was killed by police in Harlan County, but for some reason, the slideshow was included in the documents. 

Ted Walton, one of the partners at the law firm, handed the documents over to his two teenage sons, who broke the national story in their high school newspaper The Manual RedEye. The fact that it was teenagers who did the initial reporting on this story is fitting, considering that these slideshows were given to teenagers with aspirations of becoming police. 

The disturbing slideshow featured a line from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf that reads, “The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.”

Hitler is quoted 3 times in the presentation, which makes him the most quoted person in the slideshow. 

The slideshow also links to a Goodreads page for Hitler.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee was quoted in a slide titled “The Thin Gray Line,” which showed a group of white officers in the department’s traditional gray uniforms. Confederate uniforms were also gray, which makes Lee’s quote on this particular slide all that more suspicious. Lee’s quote instructs the cadets that “manliness will carry you through the world much better than policy.”

Another slide features an absurd quote about how the world can live without engineers and doctors, but not without warriors. 

The phrase “Über Alles” is featured in large text on the final page of the slideshow, which is a German term that means “above all” or “above everything else.” The phrase was once in the German national anthem, but has since been removed because it emphasizes national superiority, and is associated with the Nazis.

In a statement emailed to RedEye, KSP spokesperson Lieutenant Joshua Lawson admitted that the slides were real, but defended them being in the presentation, saying that they were included because of their “relevance” to law enforcement, not necessarily because of the person who said them.

“The quotes are used for their content and relevance to the topic addressed in the presentation. The presentation touches on several aspects of service, selflessness, and moral guidance. All of these topics go to the fundamentals of law enforcement such as treating everyone equally, service to the public, and being guided by the law,” the statement read. 

In a followup email, Lawson clarified that the presentation was seven years old. Morgan Hall, the Communications Director for the Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, which oversees the State Police, later confirmed that the presentation has not been used since 2013.

The slides were put together by now-retired Lieutenant Curt Hall, according to a deposition given by KSP Captain James Goble on October 14. Hall’s name was also on the front page of the presentation.  

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear responded to the report by saying: “This is absolutely unacceptable. It is further unacceptable that I just learned about this through social media. We will collect all the facts and take immediate corrective action.”

Rep. John Yarmuth, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, also expressed his disgust with the leaked presentation.

I am angry. As a Kentuckian, I am angry and embarrassed. And as a Jewish American, I am genuinely disturbed that there are people like this who not only walk among us, but who have been entrusted to keep us safe. There needs to be consequences. https://t.co/Bpu6b1eJWr

— Rep. John Yarmuth (@RepJohnYarmuth) October 30, 2020

In “cockfights” where roosters are forced into combat with one another, razor blades are typically attached to the legs of the birds so their attacks are more lethal. People who handle the animals during these contests are sometimes injured by the animals because they can be difficult to control. 

During a raid on an illegal cockfight in a small Philippine town, a police chief was killed by one of the roosters in this manner. The raid took place in Madugang village in Northern Samar province on Monday. San Jose Police Chief Lt. Christian Bolok bled to death after a razor blade on one of the birds slashed an artery in his leg.

Provincial Governor Edwin Ongchuan said that the injury was sustained while Bolok was attempting to confiscate the birds.

“He was trying to confiscate the roosters but the problem was the rooster’s blade may have been laced with poison,” Ongchuan told The Associated Press.

Three farmers were arrested in the raid and seven roosters were confiscated, although police only gathered 550 pesos which is worth about $10 in cash.

Cockfighting is very popular in the Philippines and many of the matches are actually illegal. However, the events have been banned because of the coronavirus pandemic, and authorities have been cracking down on any gathering involving more than a few people.

The Philippines has the second-highest number of infections in Southeast Asia, with more than 375,000 infections and at least 7,114 deaths recorded since the pandemic began.

“We grieve with our provincial police in the loss of such a committed and selfless officer whose enforcement of our community quarantine regulations has cost him his life,” Ongchuan said in a statement.

There are two kinds of blades used in Philippine cockfighting: single-edged blades and double-edged blades, and the length of the blades also varies. All blades are attached to the left leg of the bird, but depending on the agreement between owners, blades can be attached on the right or even on both legs. The country has hosted several World Slasher Cup derbies, held biannually at the Smart Araneta Coliseum, Quezon City. World Slasher Cup is also known as the “Olympics of Cockfighting”. The World Gamefowl Expo 2014 was held in the World Trade Center Metro Manila.

While this may sound like a freak accident, it is actually more common than most people think. Earlier this year, a man in India lost his life under very similar circumstances. In that case, the man was killed by his own rooster while on his way to take the bird to a cockfight. The strange incident occurred on January 15 in the village of Pragadavaram in southern India’s Andhra Pradesh state. The man was somehow hit in the neck with one of the blades during the altercation. He was taken to the hospital where he later died of a stroke.

If we aren’t careful, space could end up controlled by a totalitarian empire, warns Johns Hopkins University political scientist Daniel Deudney in his new book, “Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity.”

Specifically, Deudney warns against the increase of militarization of space and colonization without thought for political consequences. Nations including China and Russia are already beginning to weaponize space with energy weapons and anti-satellite missiles. That’s according to the Pentagon, last year in a report in CNBC.

The U.S. is also involved in the weaponization of space and a U.S. Air Force commander has even previously proclaimed that space weapons should be used against ISIS.

 “If we want to be more agile then the reality is we are going to have to  push decision authority down to some lower levels in certain areas the  big question that we’ve got to wrestle with … is the authorities to  operate in cyber and space,” General David Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, told USA TODAY. 

This is despite such actions being forbidden under the United Nations’ Outer Space Treaty established in 1967, for any nation to weaponize space. Additionally, the “Space Preservation Treaty”  in 2005, states that countries won’t seek to weaponize space.

Deudney’s book lays out six threats to humanity, with the most important being the military use of equipment needed to terraform other worlds. Deudney concludes, according to The Space Review‘s analysis of his book, that we should abandon any hope of settling space until peace on Earth is achieved and we can explore responsibly.

In a review of Deudney’s new book about his concerns, University of Leicester international relations lecturer Bleddyn Bowen contends that Deudney’s assertions might be a touch morbid. However, he says that Deudney makes a compelling argument that space exploration poses several overlooked perils to our future.

Without agreeing with everything Deudney said, Bowen says that his warning should serve as an important counter to space exploration’s techno-utopian coating.

It’s worth noting that former President George Bush Jr’s forgotten speech in 2001 mentions forming a Space Force, and creating a new spacecraft and “space bomber.”

The main thing to take away from all this information is as Seattle-pi wrote in a 2015 article, “Weapons in space put the world at risk,” especially if they are run unsanctioned unbeknownst to Congress and even the President of the United States by Military Industrial Complex Aerospace corporations. It’s quite literally a threat to National Security and American sovereignty, as space is the final frontier as Neil Armstrong said. However, as Deudney warns, it could also be turned into a battlefront which will give rise to a space empire.