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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 2/13/16

It takes a Greek to save Europa

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The Minotaur metaphor is indispensable to understand the "model" -- defined as "controlled disintegration of the world economy" -- imposed upon the whole planet by former chairman of the Fed, Paul Volcker. Starting in the go-go 1980s, this "chaotic, yet strangely controlled flux," as Varoufakis defines it, translated into foreign investors sending billions of US dollars to Wall Street every day, thus financing the US's twin deficits -- and feeding the Global Minotaur.

So we're back, once again, to Greek classical mythology. King Minos of Crete asked Poseidon for a bull as a sign of divine endorsement. He promised Poseidon he would sacrifice the bull in the god's honor. Yet he didn't. Punishment, thus, was inevitable.

Talk about creative punishment. The gods, using Aphrodite's expert qualifications, had Minos's wife, Queen Pasiphae, fall madly in love/lust with the bull. Using various props built by the legendary engineer Dedalus, the queen managed to get pregnant. The product was the Minotaur: half human, half bull.

When the Minotaur became huge and uncontrollable, Minos told Dedalus to build a labyrinth. The only way to appease the Minotaur in his labyrinth was to offer human flesh. And here we get into Minos from Crete getting his revenge on Athens; King Aegeus of Athens had killed Minos's son after he won all the contests at the Pan-Athenian games. So after a brief war with Athens, Aegeus was forced to send seven young boys and seven unwed girls to be devoured by the Minotaur every year.

This -- in myth -- was the set up for a regular foreign tribute that kept the Minotaur well fed. Nowadays, or until 2008, this was the set up of Pax Americana. But unlike the myth, where Theseus -- the son of Aegeus -- eventually slaughtered the Minotaur, what doomed the new monster were the lowly subprime racket and a tsunami of CDOs and CDSs.

Varoufakis could not but be attracted to a remix of the Minotaur metaphor; a periodic one-sided tribute -- in US dollars -- from the whole planet enabling the hegemonic "Exceptionalists" to project power across the seas. This Minotaur is now dying, the world is still encumbered with its rotting carcass, and no one knows what beast is to rise next.

For now, it's time to fight another, lesser Minotaur; a monster devouring its step-grandmother Europa's children by autocracy, austerity, unemployment and fear. And once again, it takes a Greek, not a hero by any means, to show Europeans the way.

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Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia (more...)
 

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