In which the pond indulges in a quadrella of reptiles covering mad King Donald ...

 

To add to its sense of malaise and doom, the pond recently took in the recently released documentary about contrarian journalist Seymour Hersh. 

Cover-Up is on Netflix (this isn't a proposal that anyone subscribe to that monolith, there are other ways), with one of the film-makers coming to fame with a documentary about Snowden, the man who proved you can jump from the American fire storm to Vlad the Sociopath's frypan.

The now 88 years old Hersh is in feisty form - at one point he proposes quitting the show - and while he had his ups and his downs (which the doc doesn't avoid), he was there at the heart of any number of examples of America gone bad, from My Lai to Gaza (and he's gone Substack). 

Anyone who could have Henry Kissinger and tricky Dick as enemies has to be worth something (he even scored a couple of mentions on those infamous tapes).

He takes a swipe at the both sider and insiderisms of the New York Times, calling out the rag's willingness to submit to administrations while doing some nest-feathering of its own - a guaranteed way to get the pond on side.

And who could argue with him when he says that the United States has an "enormous culture of violence?"

Well worth a look, and in related, more genteel matters concerning violence, the pond recently caught again up with The Ladykillers, this time released in exceptionally good 4K (not the dreadful Coen Brothers version, the classic Alexander Mackendrick comedy caper movie).

It was the last Technicolor three stripe film to be made in the UK and at last it can be seen in vibrant colour, and is a perennial pond favourite.

What's that you say?

Only a few days back and already bored by the prospect of herpetology studies? 

No, the pond just thinks that it's important that students have a life outside the hive mind, so that they can approach their studies with a semblance of sanity.

This is particularly so because today the reptiles had recovered from the recent colonial capersshock and were back in full jihad mode.

The pond decided not to link to any of the jihadists, or otherwise abet, enable or support any of it, even by showing what was at the top of the Australian Daily Zionist News this day. 

Wilcox said all that needed to be said about this, and about them:

Moving on from the astro-turfing - look at that man in the Wilcox leading the way to the sounds of Benji's drum-beat - the pond was lucky that mad King Donald and his minions still hovered on the lizard Oz fringes, and there were several mighty MAGA efforts that took the reptiles, and so the pond, far away from the jihadists ...

The contradictory header, featuring a reluctance to acknowledge that King Donald is acting like an authoritarian dictator with hints of megalomania amid the incessant narcissism and visible mental decline: Trump was right to rip up rule book on Venezuela: The idea that international law keeps the world safe is laughable: we’re all better off without dictators.

The caption: Venezuelans celebrate in Santiago, Chile, after the announcement that President Nicolas Maduro had been captured and flown out of Venezuela. Picture: AP

Sadly, still no bromancer, but the reptiles called in Melanie of The Times - much valued Graudian refugee and Eurabia loon - to do an heroic MAGA rant for a goodly, bigly four minutes.

The Trump administration claims that extracting Venezuela’s head of state, Nicolas Maduro, to stand trial in the US fell within international law. Others vehemently disagree, saying the US attack in Caracas was illegal because it contravened the UN charter and bust wide open the rules-based international order.
This is at root an argument about international law itself, whose sources are set out by the UN’s International Court of Justice. This defines it as being based on international agreements and conventions, international custom, general principles of law “recognised by civilised nations” and the teachings of “the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations”.
Law, however, lays down clear boundaries. “Custom”, “general principles” and “publicists” are a vague and incoherent mishmash.
As for international agreements such as the UN charter, these are in effect contracts between parties that sign them and thus pledge to abide by their principles. That’s not the same as law. After all, people don’t have to sign anything to be bound by their country’s laws; it’s their duty to obey them because their authority is absolute.

The reptiles flung in a snap of mad king Donald to help Melanie in her ranting, US President Donald Trump salutes as he walks from Marine One to the White House. Picture: AP

Of course there are other ways to evoke his spirit ...

Mad Mel (is it only the pond who can remember Mad Mel coming out of his cage for the Good Guys back in the day on 2SM?) carried on blithely, with the pond wondering how soon we might get to enjoy a world war ...

International law is essentially politics by other means, with no ultimate authority because it has no identifiable jurisdiction. The rule of law is vital for a civilised culture. But that involves laws passed within the jurisdiction of a democratic nation and that are therefore rooted in the consent of the people. That isn’t true of international law, which is contingent instead on global power politics.
Of course countries should honour their pledges to each other. But as in any agreement, the pledge is voided if the other side undermines or departs from its provisions.
That’s the case with the UN, the supposed custodian of peace and justice. This noble aim is voided by the presence of tyrannical Russia and China on the Security Council, and the General Assembly’s domination by dictatorships and rogue states.
The UN and its affiliated bodies also have turned justice on its head to attack Israel through a mangling of truth, systematic harassment and an abuse of process.
Judge Julia Sebutinde, the ICJ’s Ugandan vice-president who persistently has voted against the majority on the court in its rulings against Israel, has pointed out that it repeatedly exceeded its powers to make them.
Despite all this, international law has become an overarching and unchallengeable political instrument. Its advocates claim that it is the sole bulwark against the anarchy of “might is right” great-power politics.
If the US can remove Maduro from power, they say, what’s to stop Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping from doing something similar to people they don’t like?

At this point the reptiles provided an epic distraction, a series of breakout boxes, with the pond forced to carry them, though as a result, the truly idiotic mad Mel's insights were lost, but hold on, the idiocy will soon resume ...

As always, the pond remains committed to full coverage, now back to the idiocy ...

This is truly idiotic. The argument that removing a tyrant who has harmed his own people and the world is an incentive to other tyrants to remove world leaders they don’t like can be made only by moral relativists who make no distinction between self-defence and aggression.
Neither Putin nor Xi need any such encouragement. Putin invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea and marched into Ukraine while the rules-based order of international law supposedly was being upheld on the Security Council – by none other than Putin.
International law didn’t stop Bashar al-Assad from butchering a half-million Syrians, nor Iran’s Islamic regime from waging terrorist war on the West for the past half century. Xi will invade Taiwan if, like Putin, he thinks he can get away with it. Far from incentivising such tyrants further, the Maduro coup will more likely mean they’ll be nervously feeling their own collars. Good.

International law also totally failed to prevent Maduro tyrannising the people of Venezuela and undermining the security of the world by turning his country into ground zero for the axis of evil: Russia, Iran and China.
Jason Kenney, Canada’s former defence minister, has detailed the intelligence briefings he received two decades ago about how the Venezuelan regime imported raw cocaine from the FARC Marxist terror group in Colombia and worked with the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to ship it in “dark” planes to Beirut, where it was then processed in Hezbollah facilities in Lebanon. It was then shipped to Europe and the proceeds used to finance Hezbollah operations, including weapons procurement.
This co-operation has grown since then, Kenney says, with Iran providing Venezuela with arms, helping sustain its oil industry and marketing its sanctioned crude. In return, Venezuela has acted as a giant base of operations for Iran in the Western hemisphere, including ongoing involvement by the IRGC and Hezbollah in drug trafficking and money laundering, all in lock-step with Russia.

Indeed, indeed, and why stop there?

SOON!

At this point the reptiles flung in another helpful distraction, a timeline sadly rendered inert by the pond:

Mad Mel returned for a final flourish, with a rhetoric worthy of Adolf in search of lebensraum:

And in case this has slipped the minds of rules-based order aficionados, Hezbollah has carried out terrorist attacks in countries including Israel, Lebanon, Kuwait, Argentina, Panama, Saudi Arabia and Bulgaria.
If international law means the world must just continue to put up with this, there’s something badly wrong with international law.
The only way really bad people are ever stopped from doing evil is by force – to coin a phrase, peace through strength. Liberal universalists regard this viewpoint as anathema. But the rules-based order they treat as holy writ has tied the world’s hands and thereby given bad people free rein to inflict upon it war, enslavement and mass murder. Despite well-founded practical concerns about Venezuela, the abandonment of the rules-based order is not a cause for panic. It’s a relief.
The Times

What a relief. What could possibly go wrong?

Next thing, the reptiles pulled off a stunning coup, a pièce de résistance.

They dragged out SloMo from the cupboard, dusted off the moths and allowed him a full four minute MAGA ramble.

The header: Washington resets the strategic calculus with disruptive acts; The actions taken against the Maduro regime should not be understood as the impulsive theatrics of a narcissistic president but as a deliberate execution of stated US strategy.

The caption for the klown king in klown kompany: Donald Trump monitors US military operations in Venezuela with CIA director John Ratcliffe at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. Picture: The White House via AP

The clap happy liar from the Shire was in the form that saw him turfed out in 2022, the country saved from a nightmare akin to a never ending bout of long Covid:

Too often, Western analysis of the Trump administration collapses into caricature: incoherent, narcissistic, strategically illiterate and dangerously disruptive of a benign “rules-based order”. Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela will likely get the same treatment.
Such commentary cannot get past its own sense of cultural offence at Donald Trump’s style and rhetoric to seriously engage with the substance of what is unfolding. It fails to separate the noise from the sound and mistakes discomfort for insight.
Worse, it assumes that because Trump offends liberal sensibilities, he must therefore lack strategic understanding. That assumption is wrong.
The actions taken against the Maduro regime by the Trump administration should not be understood as the misguided and impulsive theatrics of a narcissistic president but as a deliberate execution of stated US strategy and as a signal that this administration means what it says.
What Trump understands is that America’s adversaries have spent decades learning how to play the global system as it actually exists, not as Western capitals wish it to be. They exploit legalism, institutional inertia, moral hesitation and escalation aversion to entrench power, launder legitimacy and shift facts on the ground.
They do so patiently, asymmetrically and with ruthless clarity about interests.
Trump’s objective is not to preserve a failing system in its degrading form but to disrupt it and reset the cost calculus.

The reptiles again celebrated with a visual distraction: Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are escorted in handcuffs by US agents en route to a Federal courthouse in Manhattan on Monday. Picture: XNY/Star Max/GC Images

SloMo carried on in full MAGA mode, untroubled by any saucy doubts or fears:

The reason America’s adversaries react most sharply to his actions is precisely because they recognise the threat he presents to their operating model.
Trump’s 2025 national security strategy explicitly warned that decades of inaction had allowed “non-hemispheric competitors to make inroads into the hemisphere”, describing this failure as “another great American strategic mistake”. Unlike many such documents, this was not rhetorical scene-setting. It was a statement of intent and it is now being enforced.
The strategy identifies China as the US’s principal strategic rival and makes clear that their competition is not confined to the Indo-Pacific or Europe. It is global, cumulative and systemic.
Influence banked in Caracas weakens deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Energy leverage secured in Latin America cushions coercion elsewhere. Diplomatic cover traded in New York is cashed in Geneva, The Hague and the South China Sea. Strategic rivalry does not respect geography.
Venezuela under Nicolas Maduro became a textbook case of this dynamic. What began as domestic authoritarian decay metastasised into something far more dangerous: a platform for external powers to project influence into the Western hemisphere, erode US credibility and entrench a network of criminality, repression and geopolitical alignment hostile to American and allied interests.
China’s role was central. Beijing invested more than $60bn into Venezuela through loans, infrastructure projects, military co-operation and diplomatic backing.
These were not commercially rational decisions. Nearly half of all Chinese lending in Latin America and the Caribbean ended up concentrated in a country whose economy collapsed by roughly 75 per cent between 2014 and 2021 and that suspended repayments in 2020. Any claim that China persisted for domestic financial reasons collapses under scrutiny.
China stayed because Venezuela delivered strategic returns.

At this point the reptiles flung in an epic AV distraction:

A Florida Republican has argued that Democrats are engaging in “Trump Derangement Syndrome” in their response to the US government’s operation in Venezuela. Florida Rep Mike Haridopolos called out Democrats for their hypocrisy regarding Nicolas Maduro’s capture. "It doesn't take much research to find speech after speech of Democrat House members and Senate members who said that this guy is a bad guy, he should be taken out of power," Haridopolos told Fox News Digital. "What did they expect was then going to happen? You think this guy was just going to voluntarily give up? He clearly was not. He was getting into bed with the Cubans, the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, even Hezbollah, as I understand. I mean, this guy was trying to create a group of enemies in an oil-rich state at our footstep.” Democrats and Republicans have been largely polarised in their views of the strikes in Venezuela.

He's from Florida and we're supposed to listen to him? Is there a 'gator handy? 

Remember along with Seymour Hersh the good old days ...

Ah memories.

Meanwhile, SloMo was still playing 4D strategic chess with King Donald:

First, it advanced Beijing’s longstanding ambition to weaken US influence in the Western hemisphere and promote a multipolar order less constrained by Western norms. Second, it offered privileged access to the world’s largest proven oil reserves, insulating China from future energy shocks or Western pressure. Third, it secured an all-weather political ally.
Maduro’s government reliably supported Beijing’s positions on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and the South China Sea while rejecting scrutiny of China’s human rights record. This was ideological alignment in service of power. These positions should matter to Indo-Pacific allies, especially Australia. Every authoritarian vote mobilised in support of China’s territorial claims chips away at the rules-based order on which regional stability depends.
The notion that Venezuela is somehow irrelevant to Asia misunderstands how strategic competition works in practice.
Trump’s national security strategy thankfully makes clear that the US will no longer tolerate hostile powers using weak states, criminal networks or ideological fellow travellers to undermine American security from within its own hemisphere.
What distinguishes this administration is that it has moved from diagnosis to execution.
That credibility matters because our adversaries take words seriously, even if we do not. Xi Jinping has been explicit about China’s intent to revise the international order and reunify Taiwan, by force if necessary. Vladimir Putin told the world, repeatedly, that Ukraine was not a real state before he invaded it. Iran’s leadership openly proclaims its goal of destroying Israel and exporting revolution.
These statements were not bluster; they were warnings. The West ignored too many of them, to its cost.
The same standard should now be applied in reverse. When the Trump administration states it will secure the hemisphere, dismantle narco-terrorist networks and confront regimes that function as strategic assets for adversaries, it should be assumed to mean exact­ly that. The Maduro operation demonstrates that this is not theoretical positioning.

The radical reptiles continued the visual celebrations: A man holds the flags of Venezuela and the United States next to the statue of Simon Bolivar in Bogota’s Bolivar Square during a rally after confirmation of Mr Maduro's capture. Picture: Getty Images

Then came a final SloMo flourish:

This brings us to the unresolved moral and strategic question at the heart of the international system: why are dictators and transnational criminals so often afforded protections that shield them from accountability? Sovereignty was never intended as a blanket immunity for mass repression, electoral theft, narco-terrorism or strategic subversion. Yet international norms and institutions increasingly have been manipulated to delay justice, dilute sanctions and normalise impunity. The result has been neither stability nor peace but the entrenchment of regimes that externalise their dysfunction and invite hostile powers into positions of influence.
For the US, continuing to tolerate that system would directly contradict its own strategy and undermine its credibility with allies, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. Partners facing coercion from China need confidence that Washington will enforce red lines, not merely articulate them.
Strategic credibility is indivisible. If the US tolerates criminalised authoritarian regimes from it neighbours, its deterrence posture in the Indo-Pacific weakens.
The message now being sent is sharper: alignment with America’s adversaries, sustained repression and criminal governance carry consequences. Not eventually; not rhetorically. In practice.
This is not about regime change as an abstract objective. It is about restoring the principle that power does not grant permanent immunity and that strategic competition has rules that must be enforced if stability is to endure.
The real question, then, is not whether the US acted consistently with its strategy. It did. The more uncomfortable question, particularly for those still clinging to cartoonish readings of American power under Trump, is whether they are prepared to recognise that the global system has been gamed for years and that disruption, not complacency, is now the price of restoring balance.
Scott Morrison was the 30th prime minister of Australia. He serves as vice chairman of American Global Strategies.

While strategising, why not pay attention to a French suggestion as to where oil might be found?

What an excellent suggestion.

Meanwhile, poor Machado. How needy she sounds:

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado says she would share Nobel Peace prize with Trump
María Corina Machado, the exiled Venezuelan opposition leader, used an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show on Monday to assure Donald Trump that she would like to share the Nobel peace prize she won last year with him.
Machado, whose failure to immediately surrender the Nobel prize to Trump reportedly angered the US president, also told Fox News on Monday that she plans to return to her country as soon as possible.
In the aftermath of the US military operation to depose Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president who is widely believed to have stolen the last election from the opposition, Trump dismissed the idea that Machado should run the country. “I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader,” Trump said. “She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country. She’s a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect.”
Two people close to the White House told the Washington Post that Machado had alienated Trump by accepting the Nobel prize, instead of giving it to him.
Although Machado dedicated the award to Trump, her acceptance of the prize was the “ultimate sin” in Trump’s eyes, one of the people told the Post. “If she had turned it down and said, ‘I can’t accept it because it’s Donald Trump’s,’ she’d be the president of Venezuela today,” this person said.
Speaking to Hannity, Trump’s close ally, Machado was effusive in her praise for Trump, but she admitted that she had not yet offered to give him the Nobel prize. “It hasn’t happened yet,” she said, “but I certainly would love to be able to personally tell him that we believe, the Venezuelan people, because this is a prize of the Venezuelan people, certainly want to give it to him, and share it with him.”

Share everything!

But wait, there's more.

Gerard of the WSJ also bobbed up, as the pond forlornly cried, "where's the bromancer when he's badly needed?"

The header: Four myths about the capture of Maduro; And the reality: It was a superbly executed act of strategic opportunism that removed a vexing enemy.

The caption: President Donald Trump waves as he walks from Marine One to the White House after the Maduro operation. Picture: AP

Gerard of the WSJ was in chest thumping MAGA warrior mode, a myth busting marvel:

For someone so voluble, Donald Trump isn’t the most effective at articulating a rationale for his strategic thinking. His foreign policy is so unusual in the context of recent history that almost every action he takes is subject to a range of fevered interpretations from friends and critics alike.
So it was last weekend, following the military operation to remove Nicolás Maduro, dictator of Venezuela, and bring him to the US for trial. The daring enterprise has engendered a host of grand theories about President Trump’s strategic decision-making, the ideas behind it, and its implications. In all this exegesis, there are at least four myths and one important truth.
Myth One: This was a law-enforcement operation to bring to justice a notorious narcotics trafficker.
The officially stated reason for Operation Absolute Resolve is also the least plausible. I have great regard for Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, and I have no doubt he will bring a watertight case against Mr and Mrs Maduro, but no one buys the claim that this was an initiative primarily in pursuit of criminal justice. (Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty Tuesday AEDT)
For one thing, the last Latin American head of state convicted in a US court on drug-trafficking charges was just granted a pardon by Trump, so the administration’s commitment to rooting out narco-presidents seems less than solid. For another, Trump, with his characteristically blunt capacity to say things that contradict his own officials, waxed lyrical all weekend about the operation’s blessings for Venezuelan freedom, democracy, oil, and the “Donroe Doctrine.”

Never mind any of that, show us the current villain, Courtroom sketch of deposed president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro. Picture: AFP

Gerard of the WSJ carried on with his myth busting:

Which brings us to Myth Two: The removal of Maduro will result in an energy bonanza for the US.
This is flawed thinking geologically, mathematically and economically. The country’s heavy oil isn’t easily extracted. It will require massive capital expenditure to get back to the 3 million barrels a day the country was producing a few years ago. In the unlikely event it did open up significant additional production, the addition to world supply would depress oil prices. For many US energy producers, $50-a-barrel oil is below production cost. Whatever benefits may flow from Venezuela won’t change America’s energy equation.

The prospect of access to oil was surely a big factor in the decision to effect a regime change, but its implausibility lies in the unlikelihood of its being realised. There has been excited commentary about how Venezuela sits atop 300 billion barrels of oil, and how that means, at current crude prices, that the U.S. just took control of an asset worth $US17 trillion ($25trillion).

The reptiles helpfully provided a flashback, just to normalise the current situation: Panamanian General Manuel Noriega, left, in October 1989 in Panama and in January 1990 in Miami. Picture: AFP

Talk about a man who could have done with a King Donald pardon, as Gerard of the WSJ MAGA'd on:

Myth Three: This latest exercise in US-led regime change represents the ultimate discrediting of “America first” foreign policy “restrainers.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, transfigured in the media from her previous role as everyone’s favourite nut job to her new status as sagacious observer of geopolitics, was widely quoted making this case: “Regime change, funding foreign wars, and American’s [sic] tax dollars consistently funnelled to foreign causes … is what has most Americans enraged,” she tweeted.
But Trump’s foreign policy was never as restrained as some of his supporters wanted it to be. As he showed in his first term with the successful strikes against Iran’s Qassem Soleimani and Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, he has never been shy about deploying US force. The same was true for the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities last summer. The Maduro raid is entirely consistent – a quick and apparently successful strike that delivers a blow to America’s enemies without resulting in lengthy entanglements.

All good, there's nothing like celebrating a man who flogged himself as the peace president, who would end wars and would have nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of regime change whatsoever, and didn't say it once, said it any number of times so late night comedians could produce a montage of clips.

What's a little hypocrisy in a welter of narcissistic self-indulgence, as the reptiles flung in another celebration, A man holds a painting depicting United States President Donald Trump during a protest against the US intervention in Venezuela, in Buenos Aires. Picture: AFP

Steady, reptiles, that looked a little like a monster, and Gerard of the WSJ is on a roll:

Myth Four: The operation is a disastrous break with US historical respect for international law and sets a terrible precedent that will be exploited by Russia and China as an excuse to achieve their own objectives.
Give me a break. Two, actually.
First, the US has a long history of removing unfriendly leaders on questionable legal grounds going back at least three-quarters of a century. From Iran’s Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 to Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973, Panama’s Manuel Noriega in 1989 to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 2003 and many more in between.
What’s more, this latest action hardly constitutes a green light for dictators everywhere.
Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.) suggested the seizure of Maduro would now be emulated: “What prevents China from claiming the same authority over Taiwan’s leadership?

Quick, a snap of Vlad the sociopath ...Russian President Vladimir Putin. Picture: AFP

And so to a final celebration:

What stops Vladimir Putin from asserting a similar justification to abduct Ukraine’s president?”
I have news for Senator Warner: Putin has not declined to capture Volodymyr Zelensky because of his deep regard for the niceties of law. Xi Jinping, fresh off defying international law in the South China Sea and tearing up his country’s treaty with the UK over Hong Kong, isn’t somehow being prevented from seizing Taiwan’s leader because some lawyer in Beijing has been telling him that isn’t how America behaves.
So much for the myths. The reality is this: The Maduro grab was a superbly executed act of strategic opportunism that removed a troublesome enemy in the region most vital to US interests.
Ultimate judgment on it will rest on its long-term outcome. But for now it sends a message to friends and foes alike: We have the capacity and the will to eliminate ruthlessly those who would cause us harm.
The Wall Street Journal

Yee-hah .... ride that rig just like Slim Pickens riding that bomb...

But wait, there was even more ...

Ben was also packing it for the lizard Oz this day ...

The header: Nicolas Maduro defiant in the dock as Donald Trump talks big on Venezuelan oil;Donald Trump has declared he will personally oversee Venezuela’s future and rebuild its oil industry within 18 months after Nicolas Maduro appeared in a New York court.

The caption: Nicolas Maduro in New York on Tuesday (AEDT). Picture: Getty Images

Ben also produced a four minute rant, and the pond should confess that it was really yesterday's news, what with it having first turned up on the full to overflowing intertubes last night at 8:29PM, but the pond thought that there should be at least one local lizard Oz representative to hand.

By this point, the pond had given up on the chant of "where's the bromancer when he's badly needed?", with Ben packing it the best the local inhouse reptiles could manage:

Donald Trump has declared he can get Venezuela’s oil industry “up and running” within 18 months and will personally call the shots on the nation’s future, as its ousted leader Nicolas ­Maduro insisted he was still president and had been “kidnapped” by US forces.
Three days after US special forces snatched Maduro and his wife in Caracas, the Trump administration was lashed by adversaries and allies alike over the dramatic intervention, which the US’s ­ambassador to the UN described as “a law enforcement operation”.
Democratic congress members briefed on the raid said the Trump administration had “no plan” for what to do next in Venezuela and was unable to provide a legal justification for the action.
A defiant Maduro, 63, faced a New York court early on Tuesday morning AEDT, pleading not guilty to “narco-terrorism”, drugs and weapons charges.

The reptiles quickly flung in an AV distraction: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has pleaded not guilty to all four charges against him at a US court. The Venezuelan president and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured by the US military during a military operation in Caracas. “I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man. I am still the president of my country,” Mr Maduro said.

Ben did his best just to do a Sgt Joe Friday:

“I’m president of the Republic of Venezuela and I’m here kidnapped since January 3, Saturday,” he told the court through an interpreter. “I was captured at my home in Caracas, Venezuela.”
Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, also pleaded not guilty. The judge ordered both to remain behind bars to appear before court again on March 17.
Mr Trump said US officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller and Vice-President JD Vance would help oversee his administration’s involvement in Venezuela.
Pressed on who was ultimately in charge, Mr Trump said: “Me.”
He warned he could launch a second military operation on the country if its Acting President Delcy Rodriguez refused to co-operate, but said he did not believe it would be necessary.
Mr Trump said he believed US companies could rebuild Venezuela’s dilapidated oil infrastructure in less than 18 months as part of a US plan to “nurse the country back to health”.

Inevitably there had to be a courtroom sketch, Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in a New York courtroom. Picture: AP

Ben was keen on the whole 'oils is oils Sol' angle (or was that Venezuelan oils ain't for Venezuela?):

“I think we can do it in less time than that, but it’ll be a lot of money,” Mr Trump told NBC News. “A tremendous amount of money will have to be spent, and the oil companies will spend it, and then they’ll get reimbursed by us or through revenue.”
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum will meet this week with top oil executives, who are known to be wary of re-entering the crisis-­ridden socialist country.
Industry officials are reportedly discussing incentives for US companies to become involved. Politico said these could include US government guarantees of payment and security, or the formation of public-private partnerships.
Analyst firm Rystad Energy said $183bn ($272bn) in investment was required over the next decade to lift Venezuela’s oil production to three million barrels a day from its current level of 1.1 million barrels.
Congress’s so-called “Gang of Eight” – a bipartisan group that is typically kept in the loop on security matters – was briefed by senior administration figures on Tuesday AEST on the intervention, which was not flagged earlier to elected officials.

Lest the hive mind forget, there came a reminder of the lizard Oz party line: Free Expression: In reality the Maduros' removal from Venezuela was a superbly executed act of strategic opportunism that removed a vexing enemy, and it's a myth to suggest 'Operation Absolute Resolve' will set a precedent that will be exploited by Russia and China to achieve their own objectives.

Good old Gerard of the WSJ, he's everywhere, as Ben kept packing it ...

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Jim Himes, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio was unable to explain the administration’s next steps in Venezuela because “he doesn’t have a plan”.
“No, he doesn’t have the answers because he doesn’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or the next day,” he said.
“This is what really hurt us in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya. There’s no plan for the day after. It’s not … a plan. It’s sort of insane on the face of it.”
Earlier, the Trump administration faced heavy criticism in an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council over its actions in Caracas. China’s Charge d’Affaires, Sun Lei, blasted what he said were “unilateral, illegal and bullying acts of the US”, while Russia’s ambassador, Vassili Nebenzia, accused the US of “international banditry” and “neo-colonialism and imperialism”.

Cue a snap of liddle Marco, new viceroy of Venezuela, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Picture: AP

Ben included the Greenland matter in his musings:

France’s representative, Jay Dharmadhikari, said the raid violated “the principle of peaceful dispute resolution”, and undermined “the very foundation of the international order”.
Denmark’s UN ambassador, Sandra Jensen Landi, also expressed her country’s “deep concern” over the situation, amid warnings by the Trump administration that the Danish-administered territory of Greenland could be next.
The US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, argued the capture of Maduro was a law-enforcement operation against an illegitimate leader.
“You can’t turn Venezuela into the operating hub for Iran, for Hezbollah, for gangs, for the Cuban intelligence agents and other malign actors that control that country,” he told the Security Council. “You cannot continue to have the largest energy reserves in the world under the control of ­adversaries of the US.”
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller reiterated in an interview with CNN that the US needed Greenland “from the standpoint of national security.”
He said military force wouldn’t be necessary to acquire it, without explaining how else the US would annex the territory. “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” he said, and questioned Denmark’s claim over the territory. “What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark?” he asked.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned US military action to annex Greenland would destroy the NATO alliance.
“Unfortunately, I think the American president should be taken seriously when he says he wants Greenland,” she said in a radio interview.
“If the United States attacks another NATO country, everything stops … that is, including our NATO and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War.”
Meanwhile, Mr Hegseth revealed the raid to seize Maduro and his wife had involved nearly 200 special forces personnel.
“We saw three nights ago, in downtown Caracas in Venezuela, as nearly 200 of our greatest Americans went downtown in Caracas … and grabbed an indicted individual wanted by American justice, in support of law enforcement, without a single American killed,” he said.
Additional reporting: AFP

What a tremendous day for herpetology students. 

It's one of the rare times that the pond has indulged in a reptile quadrella, but did it pay off, or what, and who now will remember any of those other matters bedevilling mad King Donald?