In Collapsing Venezuela, ‘Paramilitaries Roaming Neighborhoods, Shooting’ At Dissenters

Venezuela is in complete chaos as a result of their economic collapse.
And as a result, state-rationed food and groceries have run out, prices are hyper-inflated and millions of people are waiting in huge lines for any goods that are available. Black markets have gone boom, with neighbors making necessities available to other neighbors, but they must avoid crackdown from a jealous State that is desperate to hang onto power.
The free-fall of oil prices on the global stage has snapped the South American socialist nation into sudden and harsh disaster. Venezuela has slightly more oil than Saudi Arabia, and trades the second largest volume, after OPEC, and was even more vulnerable than Russia to the economic warfare that has taken place in the last few years.
Things are very bad now, and they were already falling apart. Nicolas Maduro took over after Hugo Chavez’ death in 2013, but without the force of Chavez’ cult of personality, he has been unable to hold an already unrealistic economy together any longer – and the people are on the verge of complete revolt.
A politically weak Maduro has apparently now taken to using an iron-fist, with reports and video claim that Maduro has been backing paramilitary death squads to take out dissenters, and these execution gangs have been more or less randomly mowing down anyone they think might be sympathetic to anti-Maduro protests. This was true in the Chavez days, but this form of repression is now much more naked.
With state control of the media in Venezuela, and an unwillingness to report on the part of the international press, it is difficult to know all the facts. Indeed these developments have gone virtually unreported, but some of it has surfaced on YouTube.
The Caracas Chronicles is one of the rare sources to report what is really happening:

This post was published at shtfplan on February 26th, 2016.