Aliens! Has Chubais Come To Make Jack Vance a Reality?

The nightmare that Russians are experiencing now and will experience in the future emerged in the fevered imagination of American writers

It may be astonishing, but the composition of plays and novels is of incredible importance for people's life. It may sound paradoxical, but the idea of using passenger airliners as weapons of terrorism first occurred not to Saudi terrorists hiding in Afghan caves, but to successful American author of political thrillers Tom Clancy. The energy reform that has started in Russia — as well as the head of Russia's energy monopoly Anatoly Chubais’ idea to solve the problems of the communal and housing economy — also has its original foreign author.

Chubais invented and realized privatization by distributing vouchers in Russia, which gained him much popularity in politics. He engineered the second election of Boris Yeltsin to the presidency post practically without any violations of Western democratic standards. The times are different. However, Chubais has developed a concept for energy-system reform and tried to "sell" it in the parliament.

It is time for the chairman of RAO UES of Russia to quit his post, especially since it won't be vacant even for a second. Energy Minister Igor Yusufov is now claiming the leading role in the realization of energy-system reform. But Chubais won't give up. Instead, he is scheming up another energy reform, which may be even greater than liquidation of the RAO UES of Russia.

The Russian authorities have neither the finances nor the highly-qualified specialists to maintain the country's economy on a proper level. What is more, the authorities have to settle many international problems. In fact, for the time being, the authorities care only slightly about the state of the Russian economy. It is a very serious problem to find the money to make another payment of on foreign debt. It was already in 2002 that the government started considering from where to get money to make the payment successfully.

In fact, Russia's largest companies have much spare cash. Also, they have particular financial and industrial concerns in some spheres of the Russian economy, especially the housing and communal economy. So, no matter what the State Construction Committee may say about realization of the reform of the communal and housing economy, in fact the reform will be carried out by large monopolies and Russian private companies.

To begin with, the RAO RKS (Russian Communal Systems) enterprise invented by Chubais will seize the communal and housing economies of Russia's largest cities on lease or trust terms. In the following five years, the new enterprise plans to get control over everything else. This will be done with the quite noble objective of repairing and patching up the communal and housing economies to show Russians the difference between what we have in the communal sphere in this country and what citizens of developed countries have in this sphere. This can be called "Test the West."

Tariffs and prices for communal services will considerably increase. Being perfectly aware of the Russian reality, we can suggest already that Russian citizens in the northern city of Novosibirsk will have to pay twice as much as, for example, Hamburg citizens for the same kind of communal services. In other words, recently Chubais said that just as patrons cannot get sausage in a store for free, people won't get communal services in Russia without payment for them.

It is not clear how, but Anatoly Chubais managed to persuade the monsters of Russia's new economy, RAO UES of Russia, Gazprom, Eurofinance bank, Interros holding, Eurazholding and the Kuzbassrazrezugol enterprise, to become the main shareholders of RAO RKS.

The state-run monopolies RAO UES of Russia’s and Gazprom’s shares will not be with actual money, but with bills receivable of municipal communal and housing economies. In fact, financing the struggle against the devastation of the communal and housing economy of the country will be carried out at the expense of those members of the new enterprise who claim 10 percent share holdings in RKS. To make the "new minority shareholders" feel safer, Chubais assured them that the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development would also participate in the business. It is expected that the new company will invest about $700 million into Russia's communal and housing economy within the next five years.

According to liberal economic norms, the project of the new reform is ideal and faultless. This is the way such serious nationwide problems are settled in all civilized countries. Nobody seems to be concerned there that, after all, realization of such projects is always done with participation of the Mafia.

However, it is an embarrassing fact that main shareholders of the domestic communal and housing economy complex are raw-materials companies. As is known, gas, coal and oil products are main materials for production of heat and energy. A logical line thus appears: Production of raw materials, production of heat and energy, delivery of the product to the consumer, collection of payments and finally regulation of tariffs. In fact, those companies that produce all the above mentioned things become the owners of the Russian communal and housing economy system. It means they will become owners of the country who can control every movement and breath of the citizens. Does this mean market conditions and competition? If we consider the situation more closely, a monopoly of this kind has never been created in the world. But, as it turns out, the idea is not new at all.

There is an American work of fiction called Emphyrio that describes a decayed planet somewhere at the rim of the galaxy. The planet is famous for its handicrafts produced by locals. Practically the whole of the population is united into workshops by family membership in which they produce handicrafts. This means that, if your father painted trays, painting trays will be your calling all your life. The planet has cosmodromes, a modern energy-supply system, modern transport facilities and many industrial wonders. However, locals prefer to travel on foot or use donkeys as transport. The wonders of civilization are too expensive for them, as the people pay with articles they make themselves for the services they are provided. What they have is hardly enough to live on. So, the comforts of civilization are available only to tourists arriving from other planets to buy handicraft articles that are not exported to other planets.

Who, then, is the owner of the technical wonders on the planet? Legends say that there was an ancient and horribly destructive war. Hordes of humanoid aliens came to the planet from somewhere and attempted to annihilate the local population. Those who managed to remain alive took shelter in the woods and caves, where they started to await rescue. According to the legend, the arrivals either ignored biological-protection measures and fell victims to attacks of some aggressive local viruses, or simply killed each other. In any case, all of them disappeared. When the locals got out of their shelters, they found the planet had new lords, people of some other race from an unbelievably technically developed civilization. The lords volunteered to the local population to reconstruct the planet for just a few years.

They laid down several conditions: First, the few lords were to remain the hereditary ruling class. Second, energy, transport, the communal and housing economy and production of goods and food were to become their hereditary property. They retained the right of payment collection and could change tariffs. Third, the lords were to have the right to organize trade with other planets. Fourth, the lords said they would develop a concept of social organization that would be obligatory for the people of the planet forever. And, fifth, they quite naturally wanted to have the right to control the legislative and judicial authorities. Doesn't the story remind us of what is going on here in this country, in the communal and housing economy to be exact?

It turned out later that the cruel lords were the monsters who had attacked the planet and reduced it to a Stone Age level. By that time. the monsters had changed their biological forms. Emphyrio, the hereditary ruler of the planet, refused to conclude an agreement with the aliens and rejected the suggested model of planet reconstruction. But the lords were not impressed by this attitude. They nailed Emphyrio to a tower that had remained intact after the war, fabricated a signature on the agreement, started reconstruction of the planet on conditions advantageous for them and enslaved its citizens.

The author of the fiction was the American Jack Vance, who is considered the most talented master of writing social utopias in the United States. Several generations of American boys were brought up on his books. These boys later became generals, diplomats and American advisers of the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin.

A philosopher once said that ideas rule the world. This may not be obvious at first glance, but ideas do rule people. And these people in turn control a great number of other people, banks, corporations and states.

The whole mass of technologies and live power is set into motion for the sake of an abstract idea that is vague to most people. For example, America wants to bring freedom and democracy to the peoples of the world. Then, American Tomahawks are dropped on Iraqi civilians. It is declared that the whole world is a zone of the U.S. vital concerns. Then, half of the world is covered with U.S. military bases, and American corporations start overthrowing governments in other countries, provoking disorder and civil wars. The situation is practically the same as with the actions of the IMF and the World Bank in several countries.

For Anatoly Chubais, the situation is quite logical as well: Russia must be reformed. And the United States doesn't bring up the subject; they hope the reforming will be done with the hands of Chubais, the smartest and most successful top manager of this country. And the way to reform Russia was invented by Jack Vance 30 years ago.