They call it justice, but it smells like gasoline.
I woke up in Tirana to a silence that felt heavy, the kind that usually precedes a storm. But the storm had already broken, thousands of miles away, over the skies of Caracas. As a physicist, I spend my days looking at the stars, trying to understand the laws that govern the universe. But today, I am forced to look down at the mud and blood of our own planet, where the only law that seems to matter is the law of the strongest.
The United States has once again decided that its borders extend to wherever its interests lie.
On January 3, 2026, the night sky of Venezuela was lit not by stars, but by American missiles. President Donald Trump announced the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, treating a sovereign nation like a crime scene in a cheap cop show They call it a "surgical operation." They call it "liberation." But let’s call it what it really is: an act of imperial piracy dressed up in a suit and tie.
The Mask Slips
We are told this is about narco-terrorism. We are told this is about justice for the victims of a corrupt regime. And let’s be honest—Maduro is no saint. His governance has been a tragedy for the Venezuelan people. But since when does the villainy of one man justify the bombing of a capital city?
The mask of humanitarian concern didn't just slip; it was torn off by the President of the United States himself. In the aftermath of the attack, Trump didn't speak of human rights or democracy. He spoke the quiet part out loud. He declared that finally, the US would be "involved in the oil industry" of Caracas . It is the naked truth.
This isn't about the cocaine trade, or at least not entirely. It is about the largest oil reserves on the planet. It is about the Chevron contracts that were hanging in the balance. It is about the fact that for months, the US has been tightening a noose around Venezuela, not to free its people, but to strangle its economy until it coughed up its resources .
The Myth of the Clean War
I sit here in my wheelchair, thinking about the fragility of the human body. It takes so little to break us. A fall, a virus, a piece of shrapnel.
The US military machine loves to sell the myth of the "clean war." They tell us about precision drones and elite Delta Force squads who swoop in like angels of death, taking only the bad guys But war is never clean. It is messy, loud, and terrifying.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil confirmed what we all know deep down: there are dead civilians Real people. People who were sleeping in their beds when the windows of Caracas trembled and shattered. People who had nothing to do with drug cartels or geopolitical chess games.
When you launch missiles into a dense urban area, you are not a police officer serving a warrant. You are an aggressor. You are rolling the dice with innocent lives.
A Dangerous Precedent
History has a sick sense of humor. Exactly 35 years ago, the US invaded Panama to grab Manuel Noriega The script is identical. The charges are the same. The disregard for international law is the same.
But the world of 2026 is not the world of 1989.
This action has fractured the globe. While Argentina’s Javier Milei cheers "Viva la Libertad" like a cheerleader for the apocalypse, the rest of the region watches in horror Brazil’s Lula da Silva called it exactly what it is: a "very serious violation of sovereignty" and a step toward "chaos" If the United States can simply fly into a capital city, bomb its military bases, and kidnap its head of state because they don't like him, then sovereignty is a myth. International law is just a fairy tale we tell ourselves to sleep better at night.
The United Nations Charter is being used as a doormat.
The Silence of Complicity
What disturbs me most is not the aggression itself—empires have always been aggressive—but the applause. We see leaders in Europe and the Americas nodding along, accepting the premise that might makes right.
We are watching the normalization of the idea that the Global South is just a playground for the Global North. A place to extract resources, install friendly managers, and discard when convenient.
The "glory" of this operation is a lie. There is no glory in crushing a weaker opponent with overwhelming force. There is no honor in risking the lives of millions to secure cheaper gas prices.
Looking into the Abyss
As we move forward, we must ask ourselves what comes next. A puppet government installed by Washington? A civil war that spills across borders? The "orderly transition" promised by the opposition sounds nice in a press release, but reality is rarely so obliging .
At FreeAstroScience, we usually look up to find perspective. But today, the most important observation we can make is right here. We are witnessing a return to the law of the jungle, enforced by the most expensive military in history.
The explosions in Caracas are echoing in every capital city that dares to defy Washington. The message is clear: Obey, or you’re next.
We cannot accept this. We must demand a world where justice is not delivered by missiles, and where the sovereignty of a nation is not determined by the size of its oil reserves.
Until then, the smoke rising over Caracas will continue to smell suspiciously like a business deal.
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