What a journey it has been. To be quite honest, this was the first time I tried something like that. I suddenly stopped posting with the alt because I had more pressing matters to take care of, and then I kinda forgot about it. So I figured, it's now March, this has been going on since January, we need to finish this thing. Strangely, not many people actually _got_ the alt. Many were on the right track, but then accused someone else or didn't make the leap to actually saying it outright. I wasn't sure how difficult this would be, and that's why as time went on I gave away more and more information (such as the two questions answered). Still, I'm glad that many people knew to look at the alt account closely, even if they didn't accuse it. It shows healthy scepticism. In fact, only two people outright came up and pointed out the alt specifically as their choice. This means they would be the two winners, and in fact I'd already contacted them about it privately. That's right, the thing that seemed to trip most people up was that I didn't confirm or deny accusations publicly. But if you remember from the OG post, I said the hunt would end **when I ran out of keys to give out** (for the game in question). As I have 5 keys and only 2 people correctly, outright, guessed the alt, the game went on (I also figured people liked doing this so I didn't want to stop it too soon). And, in a real setting, I expect a sockpuppet or alt would not reveal their dastardly plan the first time someone accused them of being an alt. That's why I personally did not answer publicly as to the identity of the alt, and why the alt account itself sometimes defended itself against accusations. ## The clues So let's move on to the clues you didn't catch before announcing the winners. At first, I wanted this to be like an OSINT game where you'd find the alt by looking at data like when we both post, how we both talk, etc. It proved a bit difficult both for you and me, and so afterwards I started leaving clues and made it more of an ARG game. If you remember the original post, I said I took some steps to make this alt as ethical as I could. This meant the alt had some rules to obey: it could not get into an argument with other users, it could not get too friendly with other users, and it could not post stuff that's too serious. The idea being that after the alt was found, it would not have a long-lasting effect on the community. This placed some limitations on an OSINT approach as I was restricted on what I could post or comment with the alt. A few days after I made that post, I posted some very telling things. First, I changed the sidebar to include this:  What would you find in [!shitreactionariessay@lemmygrad.ml](https://lemmygrad.ml/c/shitreactionariessay) ? Well, that was the first community the alt posted to. Secondly, a few days later, I made two posts with my CR8 account: 1. https://lemmygrad.ml/post/501674 2. https://lemmygrad.ml/post/504456 There was, for the cautious reader, a certain keyword that came up in both posts that you could use to help determine the alt's identity. Did you find it? If not, here's a third post I later made: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/512279 It seems nobody caught on to these clues at the time, which prompted me to later make more posts to answer direct questions about the alt so as to help you out. Later, I made sort of a mistake when I posted a joke on Discord with my CR8 account, and then the alt posted that joke too. One comrade caught on to it and first asked me if it was alright to make the connection on Lemmygrad. I told them yes, because in a real setting a sockpuppet would mess up at some point. I figured at this point the question would be settled, but apparently not! It seems some comrades were still too hesitant to actually point at the alt. Well, that was about it for the clues I left. ## The winners. And so it's time to announce the alt. When I made it an account, I took a screenshot divulging the name. So, here it is:  That's right, the alt is [@SyntheticStardust@lemmygrad.ml](https://lemmygrad.ml/u/SyntheticStardust) ! And at that point, I can hear you groan. You were all so close to it, but alas, not close enough. However, I still have 5 keys to give out. The original winners that I mentioned were SovietSnake and Anna. Both rejected the game (SovietSnake doesn't play roguelikes, and Anna already has it), and so these keys reenter the pool. SovietSnake actually snuffed out the alt in mere _hours_ (which made me sweat I'm not gonna lie) but, he told me later, he actually thought he got it wrong when I rejected the allegations with the alt in a reply. So because we don't really have winners, I looked through the various posts to find the people that got _closest_ to getting the alt. These are people that, in one way or another, implicated SyntheticStardust. They are : - [@GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml](https://lemmygrad.ml/u/GrainEater) - [@ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml](https://lemmygrad.ml/u/ComradeSalad) And then, I want to nominate [@commiewolf@lemmygrad.ml](https://lemmygrad.ml/u/commiewolf) as an honorary winner as they were very invested in the hunt, asking questions, regrouping information, etc. And I _think_ [@Zerush@lemmy.ml](https://lemmy.ml/u/Zerush) might have gotten it too, because they made this comment: https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/363058 that kinda hints towards it. Well, tell me what you meant by it (no lying). This _might_ leave me with 1 key left (I sent it to someone and then didn't receive a word if they activated it or not so I'm putting it back in the pile), which could leave a last winner. I'll update you if the key works or not and then we'll figure out how to give it out. The game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2211110/Brick_Odyssey/. It's a very good game. I hope you had fun and we might make it a yearly thing, maybe around April Fool's day? I might enlist help from the rest of the admins next year to keep the game active next time though.

It’s official, Lenin is a confirmed Cumboy

>How long will this last? Recent developments certainly aren’t tipping the global balance in favour of the West. On the one hand, it is becoming increasingly apparent that Nato’s strategy in Ukraine isn’t working: not only is Ukraine facing heavy losses, while the West unable to keep up with Ukrainian demands for ammunition and equipment, but the sanctions have hurt Western countries, as well as developing ones. On the other, the financial crisis triggered by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is yet another reminder of the intrinsic instability of the West’s hyper-financialised brand of capitalism. >Only last week, America’s global standing took another hit with the signing of a historic agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia brokered by China (while, it should be noted, the Saudi foreign minister was in Moscow). As part of the deal, Iran has agreed to stop arming Houthis in Yemen, potentially paving the way to a resolution to the nine-year-long Yemeni war. Writing in Newsweek, David H. Rundell, a former chief of mission at the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia explained that the deal will be seen as “a watershed moment for Chinese influence in the Middle East”, while further eroding America’s already poor reputation in the region.

liberal has the worst cover-up of sinophobia, asked to leave the internet ☠️

Few days ago I attended a rally organized by PSL, almost all of present organization were Trotskyists. A jerk had me talk for five minutes about shit in Hong Kong representing the interests of the working class.Fuck! I question does the United States really have a officially active Communist Party? (CPUSA is not active in this area.)

I understand that under capitalism, when automation happens, workers get fired. But under socialism, I don't see a reason to hire new workers/expand the company. How would a new graduate find a job in the age of automation? Would they just start their own company?

Discussion questions: What video games have you played recently? What are your favorite video game genres? Question of the week: What have you gotten in terms of games recently for 2023 so far, if anything? Anyway, make sure to also answer the questions in the title. Thanks!

The Ponce massacre was an event that took place on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, when a peaceful civilian march turned into a police shooting in which 19 civilians and two policemen were killed, and more than 200 civilians wounded. None of the civilians were armed and most of the dead were reportedly shot in their backs. The march had been organized by the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party to commemorate the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico by the governing Spanish National Assembly in 1873, and to protest the U.S. government's imprisonment of the Party's leader, Pedro Albizu Campos. An investigation led by the United States Commission on Civil Rights put the blame for the massacre squarely on the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Blanton Winship. Further criticism by members of the U.S. Congress led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to remove Whinship as governor in 1939. Governor Winship was never prosecuted for the massacre and no one under his chain of command – including the police who took part in the event, and admitted to the mass shooting – was prosecuted or reprimanded. The Ponce massacre remains the largest massacre in post-Spanish imperial history in Puerto Rico. Several days before the scheduled Palm Sunday march, the Nationalists had received legal permits for a peaceful protest from José Tormos Diego, the mayor of Ponce. According to a 1926 Puerto Rico Supreme Court ruling, government permits were not necessary for the use of plazas, parks or streets for meetings or parades. As a courtesy to the Ponce municipal government, the Nationalists nevertheless requested the permit. Upon learning about the march, the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, General Blanton Winship, ordered the new Insular Police Chief, Colonel Enrique de Orbeta, to contact Mayor Tormos and have him cancel the parade permit. He ordered the police chief to increase the police force in the southern city, and to stop, "by all means necessary", any demonstration conducted by the nationalists in Ponce. Without notice to the organizers, or any opportunity to appeal, or any time to arrange an alternate venue, the permits were abruptly withdrawn, just before the protest was scheduled to begin. Following Governor Winship's orders, Colonel de Orbeta went to Ponce where he concentrated police units from across the island sporting "the latest riot control equipment", among which he included the machine gunners in the island. Winship intended to crush the activities of the Nationalists and their leader, Pedro Albizu Campos. The Insular Police, a force somewhat resembling the National Guard, was under the direct military command of Governor Winship and ultimate responsibility for the massacre fell on Winship, who controlled the National Guard and Insular Police, and ordered the massacre. Police Chief Guillermo Soldevilla of the municipality of Juana Díaz, with 14 policemen, took a position in front of the marchers. Chief Perez Segarra and Sgt. Rafael Molina, commanding nine policemen armed with Thompson submachine guns and tear gas bombs, stood in the back. Chief of Police Antonio Bernardi, heading 11 policemen armed with machine guns, stood in the east; and another group of 12 police, armed with rifles, was placed in the west. According to some reports, police numbered "over 200 heavily armed" guards. As La Borinqueña, Puerto Rico's national song, was being played, the Ponce branch of the Cadets of the Republic under the command of Tomás López de Victoria and the rest of the demonstrators began to march. The Insular Police started firing on the marchers – killing 17 unarmed civilians, two policemen, and wounding over 200 civilians, including women and children. Police firing went on for over 15 minutes. The dead included 17 men, one woman, and a young girl. Some of the dead were demonstrators/cadets, while others were passersby. As of 2009, only two survivors were known to be alive, siblings Fernando and Beatriz Vélez. The flag-bearer of the Cadets of the Republic was shot and killed during the massacre. A young girl, Carmen Fernández proceeded to take the flag, but was shot and gravely injured. A young Nationalist cadet named Bolívar Márquez dragged himself to the wall of Santo Asilo de Damas and wrote with his blood the following message before dying: "¡Viva la República, Abajo los asesinos!" ("Long live the Republic, Down with the Murderers!")  Many were chased by the police and shot or clubbed at the entrance of their houses as they tried to escape. Others were taken from their hiding places and killed. Leopold Tormes, a member of the Puerto Rico legislature, claimed to reporters that a policeman had murdered a nationalist with his bare hands. Dr. José Gandara, a physician who assisted the wounded, testified that wounded people running away were shot, and that many were again wounded by the clubs and bare fists of the police. No arms were found in the hands of the civilians wounded, nor on the dead ones. About 150 of the demonstrators were arrested immediately afterward; they were later released on bail. The following are the names of those killed: Juan Delgado Cotal Nieves María Hernández del Rosario Luis Jiménez Morales Ceferino Loyola Pérez Georgina Maldonado (7-year-old) Bolívar Márquez Telechea Ramon Ortiz Toro Ulpiano Perea Juan Antonio Pietrantoni Juan Reyes Rivera Conrado Rivera López Ivan G. Rodríguez Figueras Jenaro Rodríguez Mendez Pedro Juan Rodríguez Rivera Obdulio Rosario Eusebio Sánchez Pérez Juan Santos Ortiz Juan Torres Gregory Teodoro Vélez Torres ( May Allah grant them Jannat Al-Firdaws )

Discussion questions: What TV shows or films have you watched recently? What subscription services are you subscribed to, if any? Question of the week: What TV shows are you anticipating in 2023?

I am aware that a few years before the invasion, Iraq started selling oil in Euros instead of dollars, and I understand that the preservation of the petrodollar was a reason for the destruction of Libya. Also, there must have been a reason to go to war with Iraq the first time in 1990 and to then wage economic warfare against Iraq. I've heard some stuff about the war being really against Iran, but that doesn't really make much sense because Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a counterweight against Iran in the region (and in fact the imperialists sponsored an Iraqi invasion of Iran during the 1980s). Of course, the WMD lie and attempts to link the Iraqi government of the time to al-Qaeda (which seems to just be an imperialist asset anyway) and 9/11 was just a way to find an excuse for the invasion. The weapons manufacturers, private military corporations, and many other corporations profited greatly from the war, but there must have been a reason that Iraq specifically was targeted.

As-Salam Alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh to everyone here on lemmygrad.ml tomorrow where I live Ramadan will begin, so if someone can provide me with something to read during the 30 days of fasting, may Allah bless the ones who fast in the Holy month and bless those who don't fast and bless the non-muslims during the month. Ramadan Mubarak 🙏🏼 and also my sincere apologies to the ones I have offended or wronged here on this community 😔

https://www.codepink.org/march18 Nationwide protests shot off on the 18th and 19th. Did you see any coverage? The revolution will not be televised. RATWM is a fascist maneuvering and nothing more, attempting to recoup some of the brewing anti-war sentiment back into supporting capitalism and by extension imperialism. Libertarians, pedo "communists", and outright fascists? We don't fucking need them and I find it frustrating when people seem to think we do. RATWM was televised because it was backed by money. Dirty, bloody money coming from the likes of the Paul political dynasty. Their pathetic little gathering was not the revolutionary moment some people seemed to imply it was. It was a farce. The people will rise up and they won't need ghoulish demagogues to pay them to.

Discussion questions: What new books are you reading? Do you prefer fiction or non-fiction? Question of the week: What are your favorite publishers? Enjoy! (I do this so people here can talk about things other than politics so enjoy yourselves.)

There is a historically possible world in which the Minsk Agreement never needed to be made. In 2014, a US supported coup removed the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, with his eastern base, and replaced him with a West leaning president who was handpicked by the US. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland can be heard on an intercepted phone call selecting Arseniy Yatsenyuk as America’s choice to replace Yanukovych. The new government denied the multicultural Ukraine demanded by Donbas. It demanded a nationalistic monist vision of Ukraine. The ethnic Russians of the Donbas would suffer attacks on their language, their culture, their rights, their property and their lives. The Donbas rebelled against the coup government, and by May 2014 had approved referendums declaring some form of autonomy. The civil war in Ukraine had begun. The best available solution to the violence in the Donbas was the Minsk agreements. The Minsk agreements were brokered by France and Germany, agreed to by Ukraine and Russia, and accepted by the US and UN in 2014 and 2015. They gave Ukraine the opportunity to keep the Donbas and the Donbas the opportunity for peace and the governance they desire by peacefully returning the Donbas to Ukraine while granting it full autonomy. But there was a possible solution before the Minsk agreements. On May 11, the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Donbas voted in favor of sovereignty. Putin had asked them to delay the referenda, and, while Moscow respected the will of the people, it did not recognize the results. Two weeks later, Pyotr Poroshenko was elected president, and he initiated negotiations for a peaceful settlement with rebel leaders in Donbas. The talks were promising, and, by the end of the next month, a formula for peacefully keeping Donbas in Ukraine had been found. At this point, on June 24, the Russian parliament rescinded the authority to use troops abroad. A peace was possible. But instead, Nicolai Petro reports, the government in Kiev decided that Putin’s decision to withdraw troops put the Ukrainian military in a new advantage, and, instead of pursuing the peace, Poroshenko ordered the launch of attacks to recapture Donbas militarily. It was that betrayal of the peace process that necessitated the signing of the Minsk agreements. Badly losing the battle, Poroshenko was forced to retreat to negotiating a peaceful return of Donbas. It was only after Poroshenko’s sabotage of the peace process that the Minsk agreements became the best available solution. He would sabotage those too. But he may have had a lot of help. The Minsk agreements were negotiated by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande. Recently, each of Putin’s partners has revealed that the Minsk negotiations were a deliberate deception to lull Russia into a ceasefire with the promise of a peaceful settlement while buying Ukraine the time to build up an armed forces capable of achieving a military solution. If their claims are to be believed, the apparent peace negotiations were a cover for what was intended all along to be a military solution. The major European power in the Minsk process was German chancellor Angela Merkel. But, according to Der Spiegel, she said in a December 1, 2022 interview that she believes that “during the Minsk talks, she was able to buy the time Ukraine needed to better fend off the Russian attack. She says it is now a strong, well-fortified country. Back then, she is certain, it would have been overrun by Putin’s troops.” On December 7, Merkel repeated that admission in an interview with Die Zeit. “[T]he 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time,” she said. Ukraine “used this time to get stronger, as you can see today. The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today.” Merkel’s claim has been verified by her Minsk partner. In a December 28 interview with The Kyiv Independent, François Hollande was asked if he "believe[s] that the negotiations in Minsk were intended to delay Russian advances in Ukraine." He responded, “Yes, Angela Merkel is right on this point.” He then said, “Since 2014, Ukraine has strengthened its military posture. Indeed, the Ukrainian army was completely different from that of 2014. It was better trained and equipped. It is the merit of the Minsk agreements to have given the Ukrainian army this opportunity.” It has been plausibly suggested that Merkel and Hollande, in order to fit in with the accepted narrative of the present, have engaged in an Orwellian act of rewriting the narrative of the past. But their account is supported by the other person negotiating with Putin. Poroshenko would later say, according to Philip Short in his biography of Putin, that he signed the Minsk agreements "because it was the only way to stop the fighting, but he had known that it would never be implemented" because of the nationalist momentum in the political establishment and in public opinion. But, in May 2022, Poroshenko went beyond the claim that he signed the Minsk agreement knowing there wasn’t the political will to implement it and corroborated Merkel’s and Hollande’s claims that the deception of Russia had been deliberate. He told the Financial Times that Ukraine “didn’t have an armed forces at all” and that the “great diplomatic achievement” of the Minsk agreement was that “we kept Russia away from our borders – not from our borders, but away from a full-sized war.” The agreement bought Ukraine time to build its army. Poroshenko told the Ukrainian media and other news outlets that “We had achieved everything we wanted. Our goal was to, first, stop the threat, or at least to delay the war – to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces.” Volodymyr Zelensky has recently joined the testimony. Despite being elected on a platform that featured making peace with Russia and signing the Minsk-2 agreement, Zelensky now says that he never intended to sign them. On February 9, Zelensky reportedly told Der Spiegel that he saw the agreements as a “concession” and that he “surprised” Merkel and Macron by telling them that “as for Minsk as a whole . . . We cannot implement it like this.” Despite his updated claim, Zelensky seems to have been sincere about keeping his campaign promise to implement Minsk. Upon being elected, Zelensky told reporters that he would “reboot” peace talks with separatists in Donbas. He told them that “we will continue in the direction of the Minsk [peace] talks and head towards concluding a ceasefire.” On October 1, 2019, Zelensky signed the German and French brokered Steinmeier Formula that called for elections in Donbas and recognition of their autonomy. But he "faced an immediate backlash at home," and though Russia, Germany and France agreed to the Steinmeier Formula, in the end, Ukraine did not. The backlash against Zelensky’s promise to negotiate peace with Russia and sign the Minsk agreement was forceful and dangerous. Dmytro Yarosh, the founder of the far right nationalist Right Sector paramilitary organization, threatened that, if Zelensky fulfilled his campaign promise, "he’ll lose his life. He’ll hang from some tree. . . . It is important that he understand this." Pushed off the path of diplomacy by ultranationalist elements in Ukraine, Zelensky reversed his campaign pledge and refused to implement the agreement. His journey from federalist to nationalist was not an uncommon one. Nicolai Petro quotes Ukraine’s Minister of Transportation, Volodymyr Omelayan, who said in 2019 that "Each new president of Ukraine begins his cadence with the conviction that he is the one who can conduct a constructive dialogue with Moscow, and that he has been given the role of peacemaker, who will do business and develop good relations … And every president of Ukraine has ended up becoming a de facto [nationalist] follower of Bandera and fighting the Russian Federation." And Zelensky was not the only member of his government to face physical intimidation. During a presentation announcing Zelensky’s creation of a National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity on March 12, 2020, Zelensky advisor Sergei Sivokho was thrown to the ground by a large gang from the Azov battalion. But Zelensky’s claim that Minsk-2 was a concession that he would not implement, though perhaps not reflective of his early days as president, echoes a chorus of Ukrainian officials. The two presidents, Poroshenko and Zelensky, are not the only ones within Ukraine who have lent strength to the later claims of Merkel and Hollande. In The Tragedy of Ukraine, Nicolai Petro says that "From the outset, Ukraine’s strategy was to prevent the implementation of Minsk-2." Adding his testimony to that of Poroshenko, Merkel and Hollande, former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, Petro reports, said in a radio interview, that "Ukraine’s sole objective in signing Minsk-2 was to rebuild the Ukrainian army and strengthen the international coalition against Russia." Klimkin said that "Read literally, the Minks Accords are impossible to implement." He adds, reinforcing the deception, that "That was understood from the very first day." Petro says that "Past and present Ukrainian negotiators have all made the same point, as did President Zelensky’s Chief of Staff, Andrei Yermak, in February 2021." If this multitude of admissions are true, form Merkel and Hollande, Poroshenko and Zelensky and a choir of voices from inside Ukraine, then the Minks agreements were a deception intended to pacify and sedate Russia while Ukraine built its army and the West built its coalition in preparation for a war with Russia in Donbas that they had planned on and intended all along.

Today I learned liberals don't care about others. They don't care about their suffering, and they'll fight to keep the oppressive system running because they want to stay in their comfort. I asked my cousin, "if you can have anything you want with the snap of your fingers, what would you have?" She replied, money, tons of money. Total comfort, and no worries. I replied, super human abilities and an adventurous life. I explained to her that having tons of money and total comfort eventually gets boring because when you finish accomplishing all the things you can accomplish with money, it's gonna get boring. Then she starts to go on her anti-revolution rant and how she doesn't know what to do for change and can't find herself doing anything to support any revolution. She talks about how there's no point in doing a revolution cause even if it succeeds, you're gonna die anyways. She proceeded to explain that she wants tons of money because it fixes all problems in her life. I told her, "It fixes all of the problems in the capitalist system, not all of your problems revolve around the capitalist system." I told her, "what if the problems you have isn't fixable by money because of the system you live under? Reform isn't gonna help your motivation for black and LGBTQ rights." She says, "move to another country." Then I asked her, "what if those problems persist in other capitalist countries?" she replied with the same answer. I asked her, "what if your personality changes and your interests change, and all of a sudden you don't fit the status quo?" She says "I'm already not fit to the status quo, I'm black, I'm LGBTQ, and I'm super liberal!" Then I had to explain to her what liberalism is, and that progressive liberalism is time wasting. It's just reform reform reform until all of it gets reversed by your enemy some day. I also ask her, "why not try to change the system so you're apart of this 'status quo?" Then she replies "there's nothing I can do about it." She then does the "How do you not like capitalism if you live in it?" argument. In the conversation, I also ask her, "what about the third world countries that are taken over by capitalism?" She's like "What that got to do with me? I'm not gonna care about a country that does stupid stuff with the money given to them!" She even had the audacity to say "I'll have to kill you if you throw a revolution. I'll be sending a hitman for you. Because I don't want someone to ruin the world I'm in." People like this, there's no coming back for them. Comrades, what would you do with someone like this? Do we shape a new system that keeps them from complaining and continue living their 'comfortable' lives? I always wonder about people like this.