"Alek Boyd has AIDS"

I got up this morning to the news that "I've got AIDS." It wasn't my doctor who gave me the bad news, no. It was the Derwick boys (Francisco D'Agostino, Francisco Convit, Pedro Trebbau, and Alejandro Betancourt), who in their boundless wisdom, continue to position the only tactic they have at their disposal, money, in order to deploy the only strategy they know to use when bribery fails: intimidation. Infodio has published more than twenty items in both English and Spanish analysing the crimes and misdeameanours of the Convit-Guruceaga-Lopez mafia, and provides original research. In response, as editor of this site, I have been the target of an offensive in a pay-for-play website based in Venezuela, but hosted in the USA, called Primicias24.

“Alek Boyd Has AIDS” That is the title of the news report that sat on the front cover of Primicias24. The site has never before featured my name in such a way and, I confess, I was unaware of its existence until I saw this. The article, which features my picture, contains rather unflattering text about how I was supposedly infected with this terrible illness by a transsexual prostitute on the “Avenida Libertador,” a red light district in downtown Caracas.

The AIDS accusation is part of the unending blitz of homophobia that has marred Venezuelan politics of late [see here, and here, and here, and here]. Calling the opposition candidate and other major opposition figures all sorts of names questioning their manliness it’s a sign that the debate has degraded to the level of a children’s playground.

The irony in all of this is that sources say the author of the website, Carlos Herrera (pictured top right), had an unusually close relationship with Danilo Anderson, the prosecutor murdered in Venezuela with a car bomb. Herrera, at the time a local councilman, was one of the few individuals to rightly call for an investigation of Jose Vicente Rangel, the likely culprit. Herrera’s accusations received wide press. It seems that he didn’t want to share Anderson’s tragic fate, and instead joined Rangel’s gang. And now he’s hurling homophobic accusations at me. Hilarious stuff.

This entire affair also reveals how unworldly and unsophisticated the Derwick boys can be. They honestly believe that accusing someone of being gay and afflicted by a terrible disease is some kind of effective method to discredit. Perhaps in Iran or Afghanistan or Uganda.

Not content with providing Infodio's readers with a reason to laugh at the absurdity of their mudslinging, the Derwick boys have also created an entire website just for me, which contains accusations from totally discredited folks, such as Stalinist Calvin Tucker and adolescent Max Blumenthal.

Interestingly, the blog seemed to have been created in March, about a month before the hapless Derwick Bolichicos had to settle out of court their spurious lawsuit with a Venezuelan banker. I was beginning to feel special until I realized that the blog's author is "whoisstevenbodzin", a name strikingly similar to a fellow blogger in Chile, Steven Bodzin (Setty), who happens to have also written about Derwick and more recently uncovered who was managing the Boliburgeoisie's online reputation campaigns. Steven also has his own dedicated site, most probably created by the very same "ethical hacker" (Rafael Nuñez, pictured) that he so thoroughly exposed. Except whereas I am purportedly a diseased individual willfully spreading an infection, Setty is a professional blackmailer.

This whole affair does remind me of Setty’s investigation into the online reputation efforts of the Boliburgeoisie, but especially the part where he talks about how the Derwick boys attacked one of their critics by accusing him publicly (and falsely) of being a pedophile. I thought it was better to ignore this whole issue, but decided that it was just the perfect case study of what passes as "upstanding entrepreneurs" in Venezuela nowadays. 

Don’t these guys have better or newer or more creative material? Can $2.9 billion not buy a more credible narrative?