VIDEO: Starving Venezuelans loot truck filled with live chickens

The Excelsior story fills in the details. Keep in mind that I'm excerpting a Google translation:

A truck loaded with live chickens was taken yesterday by dozens of people in the middle of the public thoroughfare, in the town of Villa de Cura in the state of Aragua, near Caracas. The newspaper El Nacional reported that the vehicle crashed on the highway and that police and military officials arrived at the site to control the situation. Venezuela has been experiencing shortages of food and medicines for several years, a problem that was accentuated when the country entered a hyperinflationary spiral. Numerous photographs and videos of this event and of another looting that took place on Tuesday night in the city of Barquisimeto , capital of Lara state, circulate on social networks . In this case, the robbery went to a sausage shoplocated in the Patarata urbanization. The event was recorded at night and the cameras of the private establishment recorded the images of the moment when, before some customers, more than 10 hooded men jumped on the counter to take the products from the store.

The authorities did not offer information on these cases, so a balance of damages or detentions is unknown. Also, last Thursday night users on Twitter reported that in Cagua a crowd of people stopped vehicles and trucks on the National Highway looking for food.

The incident in Lara involved citizens raiding a local market where they heard sausage was available. They didn't wait for the chance to buy the sausage. They just stole it. There's no defending theft, of course, but that's what you get when an entire nation faces dire shortages of food as a result of government-imposed austerity. By the way, those of us who are sure the Maduro regime can't survive with mass starvation don't get any encouragement from today's column by Mary Anastasia O'Grady in the Wall Street Journal, which argues the regime's support from Cuba, Iran and Russia not only makes its survival likely, but sets the stage for expansion of its murderous ideology:

Pretending to be a civilian democratic government was Phase One of the Bolivarian Revolution, which was Hugo Chávez’s term for constructing a Pan-American socialist tyranny. The dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, supervised and supported by Cuba, Iran, Russia and Syria, has entered Phase Two. Starving Venezuelans and the likes of Pérez are collateral damage in this effort to expand and consolidate an anti-U.S. presence in the Western Hemisphere. Cuba was the launch pad. Venezuela is the first South American satellite. In the first phase of the Bolivarian Revolution, Chávez knew he wouldn’t always have high oil prices to support his authoritarian rule. But he also knew he wouldn’t always need them.

It turns out that the self-described disciple of Egyptian socialist Gamal Abdel Nasser and protégé of Fidel Castro was miles ahead of the democratic opposition. While it was petitioning for audits of voter rolls, he was building secret networks with the help of Tehran, Damascus and Hezbollah. He militarized the civilian government and imported Cuban secret police to spy on Venezuelans. He also established Venezuela as a major cocaine-trafficking route. Life in the once-prosperous nation is now officially hell. The minimum monthly wage is 797,510 bolivars. On Thursday that was worth $3.90. There is very little cash in the country, so workers cannot spend the money they earn unless the merchant they are buying from takes debit or credit cards. Transactions that require cash—like taking a bus, buying gasoline or tipping—are often impossible. Hyperinflation and price controls mean dire shortages. Basic medical supplies have disappeared from store shelves. People are dying of treatable diseases . . . No government is this dumb. But liberalizing the economy would end the regime’s total control. Besides, chaos, desperation and violence give it an excuse to crack down harder. A refugee crisis, sparked by hardship, makes it easier for regime agents to infiltrate neighboring countries, expanding the government’s clandestine networks. With the slaughter of Pérez, Venezuelans have been put on notice: The regime has officially abandoned any pretense about democracy and human rights. It took Castro and Nasserists decades to expand their foothold in the Western Hemisphere. They are not about to let go.

So if O'Grady is correct, it doesn't matter to Maduro's regime that the people are starving or want them out. The only thing that matters is that, between their drug trafficking and the support they get from other murderous regimes, they can continue to squash any political dissent and maintain control of public institutions. If the Maduro regime can do that, or so goes the theory, it can survive indefinitely while the people hone their skills at chicken-truck-looting and sausage-robbing, out of necessity. There will be no other way to get food. And the government, which doesn't need public satisfaction to survive, doesn't care. This was the direction we were headed with Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of Congress circa 2009-2010. It's the direction we would have been headed in once again if Hillary or Bernie had been elected in 2016. It is an outcome any clear-thinking person could have foreseen, because this is what socialism always leads to. The regime that now rules Venezuela with an iron first needs to go. Yesterday. And no one seems to have a way to make it happen.