Nuland’s Nemesis: Will Greece Be Destroyed to Save Her From Russia, Like Ukraine?

By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

A putsch in Athens to save allied Greece from enemy Russia is in preparation by the US and Germany, with backing from the non-taxpayers of Greece – the Greek oligarchs, Anglo-Greek shipowners, and the Greek Church. At the highest and lowest level of Greek government, and from Thessaloniki to Milvorni, all Greeks understand what is happening. Yesterday they voted overwhelmingly to resist. According to a high political figure in Athens, a 40-year veteran, “what is actually happening is a slow process of regime change.”

Until Sunday afternoon it was a close-run thing. The Yes and No votes were equally balanced, and the margin between them razor thin. At the start of the morning, Rupert Murdoch’s London Times claimed “Greek security forces have drawn up a secret plan to deploy the army alongside special riot police to contain possible civil unrest after today’s referendum on the country’s future in Europe. Codenamed Nemesis, it makes provision for troops to patrol large cities if there is widespread and prolonged public disorder. Details of the plan emerged as polls showed the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ camps neck and neck.” Greek officers don’t speak to the Murdoch press; British and US government agents do.

“It was neck to neck until 3 pm,” reports the political veteran in Athens, “then the young started voting. “

Can the outcome — the 61% to 39% referendum vote, with a 22% margin for Οχι (No) which the New York Times calls “shocking” and a “victory [that] settled little” – defeat Operation Nemesis? Will the new Axis – the Americans and the Germans – attack again, as the Germans did after the first Greek Οχι of October 28, 1940, defeated the Italian invasion?

The Kremlin understands too. So when the State Department’s Victoria Nuland (nee Nudelman; lead image, right) visited Athens to issue an ultimatum against breaking the anti-Russian sanctions regime, and the Anglo-American think-tanks followed with warnings the Russian Navy is about to sail into Piraeus, the object of the game has been clear. The line for Operation Nemesis has been that Greece must be saved, not from itself or from its creditors, but from the enemy in Moscow. The Russian line has been to do nothing to give credence to that propaganda; to wait and to watch.

As the head of State’s Bureau of European and Eurasian affairs, Nuland is the official in charge of warmaking in Europe. Her record in the Ukraine has been documented here. Almost unnoticed, she was in Athens on March 17 to deliver two ultimatums. The communique released by the US Embassy in Athens was headlined, “we want to see prosperity and growth in Greece.”

What Nuland (above, left) was doing with her hands is in the small print of the release. She told Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (right) not to break ranks with the NATO allies against Russia. “Because of the increasing rounds of aggression in eastern Ukraine” she reportedly said the US is “very gratified that we’ve had solidarity between the EU and the U.S., and that Greece has played its role in helping to build consensus.”

Nuland also warned Tsipras not to default on its debts to Germany, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Tsipras was told “to make a good deal with the institutions”. The referendum Tsipras called on June 27 was a surprise for Nuland. The nemesis in Operation Nemesis is the retribution planned for that display of Greek hubris.

Having thundered for a year on the illegitimacy of the March 2014 referendum in Crimea, saying yes to accession to Russia, the State Department ignored the Greek referendum for forty-eight hours. On June 29, asked what the US government was thinking of doing if the outcome “is a no vote”, Nuland’s spokesman, Mark Toner, said the US would ignore it. “We’re focused on, frankly, the opposite, which is finding a path forward that allows Greece to continue to make reforms, return to growth, and remain in the Eurozone.”

The only other official Washington reference to the Greek referendum came on June 30 when the question at the State Department daily briefing was: “what are you doing within the International Monetary Fund, of which the U.S. is the largest shareholder, to try to also press from that side for more leniency with the Greeks?” The official reply: “we’re carefully monitoring the situation…we continue to believe that it’s important that all sides work together to get back to a path that’s going to allow Greece to resume reforms and to return to growth within the Eurozone. But again, we’re monitoring this very closely.”

The last concerted attempt the US government made to overthrow an elected Greek government was against Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou between 1987 and 1989. With his son and successor George Papandreou, there was no such necessity – George and his mother Margarita Papandreou were already under Washington’s control. But against Andreas serious counter-measures were required. Military ones, of the type which ruled Greece between 1967 and 1974, had been unpopular domestically and internationally. They were demonstrably costly; they also discredited the US and NATO military which stood behind the Athens junta.

So, the Reagan Administration decided Papandreou had to be overthrown by his own people, if possible at an election. The strategy was “to give Papandreou enough rope to hang himself”, said Robert Keeley the US Ambassador to Athens at the time. That too was an Operation Nemesis of sorts – the plan was for Papandreou’s hubris to be defeated in front of the Greek electorate, first in a military showdown in the Aegean with Turkey, then in an allegation of bribery of the prime minister by a Greek banker and football club owner.

Papandreou with Turgut Ozal, Turkey’s Prime Minister, in March 1987 – before the Greek victory and Ozal’s collapse.

Both were neutralized in surprise Greek moves US officials had not anticipated. The Turks retreated after a display of combined Greek and Bulgarian force, and the Turkish Prime Minister was medivaced to a Houston, Texas, cardiology clinic. George Koskotas, Papandreou’s accuser, was arrested in Boston and returned to a Greek jail. Hubris reversed, you might say. For more, read this.

On Sunday, had Greek voters divided evenly down the old Civil War lines, right versus left, blue versus red, the security forces would have been mobilized to confront demonstrators on Maidan, er Syntagma Square, and sharpshooters deployed from the roof of the Grande Bretagne Hotel to kick off Operation Nemesis. To prepare hearts and minds for that, however, the think-tank army has failed almost totally, firing blanks in every direction but Greece.

In London the US-funded Legatum Institute skipped the poll evidence and panel discussions, attacking Venezuela, China, Syria and Russia instead for using “phenomena previously associated with democracy—elections, the Internet, the press, the market—to undermine freedoms”, along with “the self-organising potential of society.” Legatum left Anne Applebaum by herself to announce the Greek government can be overthrown because it was “elected on a completely false premise”.

The Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), the thunderer against Russian info-warfare last month, has since roared on Tunisian and Nigerian democracy; this week it is preparing for a panel discussion on “the progress that Kyiv has made in increasing transparency and reforming key government institutions”. Chatham House has stayed silent on Greek democracy and the referendum.

In Washington, the International Republican Institute (IRI) – motto, “helps democracy become more effective where it is in danger” — has been issuing its State Department-funded democracy polls for months, but for Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe; not for Greece. At the same time, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) has been preoccupied with its democracy schemes in Georgia, Iraq, and Kosovo.

The Pew Research Centre in Washington tried anticipating the Greek referendum by surveying 2.5 million Twitter messages in Greece, and publishing the results on July 3. In the Greek language the tweets were 40% to 33% in favour of voting Yes. In the English language the Greek tweets ran 32% to 7% in favour of Yes. In the event, the social media results were contrived. If Pew hadn’t invented them, the large numbers of “neutral” tweets all turned into No votes on the day.

Source: http://pewrsr.ch/1G2Gzrw

The Brookings Institution and the Peterson Institute – both funded by the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk to beat the anti-Russian drum in Ukraine — stopped short of forecasting the Greek referendum result, but condemned the government in Athens for offering it. On July 1, Carlo Bastasin, an Italian journalist on the Brookings stipend, claimed to have eyewitness evidence for “Greek leaders’ conduct as unscrupulous”, and for the Greek government’s “plans [as] more recessionary and austerity-driven than the European ones.” The reporter’s sources lacked names.

On the Peterson Institute’s executive committee Greek strategy is directed by Andreas Dracopoulos. He is a member of the family of the Greek shipowner Stavros Niarchos, whose foundation money Dracopoulos is in charge of awarding. When Dracopoulos has been asked what the Niarchos money is doing for the domestic crisis, he has mentioned food vouchers for the poor and beds for the homeless. Hedidn’t mention paying tax. Dracopoulos has been knighted by a previous Greek government as Grand Commander of the Order of the Phoenix; that was for the Niarchos Foundation’s philanthropy. Dracopoulos is pictured above with Archbishop Demetrios, primate of the American Diocese of the Greek Church, a traditional foe of governments in Athens the diocese considers left wing, or worse.

The Greek-American community has avoided a public statement on the referendum. Instead on July 1, the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA), as the national lobby group is known, announced: “We also call on the Obama Administration to step-up its engagement to ensure the parties achieve a proper solution.” If the Greek-Americans, Dracopoulos, and the Church meant Operation Nemesis, they weren’t saying no on July 5. Ahead of the vote, AHEPA issued its second announcement: “Regardless of the outcome of the referendum held in Greece on July 5, 2015, what is crucial to the Greek American community is that U.S.-Greece relations remain strong and certain and Greece’s geostrategic importance and contributions to the security interests of the U.S. and NATO is valued and appreciated.”

Political sources in Athens acknowledge that after taking power in January, Tsipras and his Syriza colleagues quietly took precautions against a putsch by the security forces. “The leadership [of the military and intelligence services] was changed,” the sources say, “but not radically. The defence minister [Panos Kammenos] is rightist so there are no ‘radicals’ in command.”

In Moscow there has been scepticism from the start that Tsipras could or would withstand the American and German pressure. For more, read this. In April, and then again in June, Kammenos sidestepped the issue of what fresh military cooperation with Russia is contemplated by the Greek side. Discussion of the details has been postponed until the two governments hold a joint ministerial commission meeting later this month.


Kammenos meets Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on April 15, 2015.
Source: http://bit.ly/1G2GzrB

Russian military analysts expect Cyprus to arrange increased military cooperation, including the Russian Navy and naval support aircraft. They do not expect Greece will ask for, nor the Kremlin agree to comparable Greek cooperation. That story can be read here.

So where did Robert Kaplan (lead image, rear) get the idea that the US and the European Union (EU) should act “to keep Russian warships away from Greek ports”? Kaplan, from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington, reported to Wall Street Journal readers on June 30 that the Kremlin plot is to use Syriza as its stalking horse to drive Greece out of the EU, and dismantle US alliance positions along the Mediterranean shore and in the Balkans. Russia, according to Kaplan, “may [sic] be helping to inflame Syriza’s internal divisions in the hope that Greece’s ruling party cannot make the difficult concessions necessary to stay in the eurozone.” Combined “with the dismemberment and weakening of Ukraine, [Greece’s no vote] will seriously weaken Europe’s geopolitical position vis-à-vis Russia.”

Kaplan’s think-tank in Washington reports that its funding comes from well-known military equipment suppliers, US oil companies, the governments of Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore; NATO; the US Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force; plus George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Chief executive of CNAS is Michele Flournoy, a founder of the think-tank which is serving as her platform to run for the next Secretary of Defense, if Hillary Clinton wins the presidential election next year. Flournoy is one of the drafters of a recent plan for the US to escalate arms and troop reinforcements in Ukraine and along the Russian frontier with the Baltic states. Here’s her plan for “What the United States and NATO Must Do” . For more on Flournoy, read this.

Until Kaplan’s report last week, the only notice CNAS has taken of Greece was a report last January explaining “Why Putin Is the Big Winner in Greece’s Election”. The think-tank expert for that one was an ex-US Treasury official with a training in Arabic and no record on Europe, let alone Greece. Kaplan, an Israeli soldier as well as a Pentagon employee and lecturer to US intelligence agencies, explains his expertise on Greece comes “from living in Athens during that decade [1980s].” If he wasn’t on an extended holiday, Kaplan may mean he was under cover.

For warfighting in Greece now, all you need to know is who the Greeks must be saved from. If the Greeks have voted more demonstratively than the Ukrainians against sacrificing themselves to this idea, the experts are confident that’s not democracy, as the Axis understands it, but hubris, for which there’s Operation Nemesis. Natch! 

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Numbered Man – An Analysis of The Prisoner (1967)

Oppositional and defiant. No. 6 “fights the system.”

1960s spy fiction is some of my favorite fiction.  Developing its own unique aesthetic, from Bond toThe Saint to Harry Palmer, the vivid, flamboyant style of both the spies and their cinema incarnations created an iconic pop phenomena that survives still (as 007 is still going strong).  Everyone knows 007, but few are aware of the more philosophical, science fiction based British cult show, The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan.  McGoohan not only starred in the show, but is also the series’ co-creator, following his successful Danger Man series, and reportedly passed over the role of Bond in Dr. Noand The Saint due to moral qualms with 007’s ethics(McGoohan was a professing Roman Catholic).  Regardless, The Prisoner remains one of the most fascinating presentations of the dark side of international espionage, combining the esoteric, philosophical, geopolitical and the fantastical, as well as functioning as a critique of the most foundational assumptions of modern, “progressive” man.  For this, it most certainly warrants an analysis.

Mysteriously resigning from the British Secret Intelligence Service, “No. 6″ finds himself drugged and kidnapped before he is even able to pack his bags and skip town.  Waking in a mock version of his own London apartment, 6 discovers himself transplanted to an idyllic self-contained, prison-like Disney-looking village, where former spies and agents are “retired.”  Unaware of his location, The Village in real life is actually Portmeirion, North Wales, which is a curiously out-of-place Italian-style village rumored to be visited by the Royal Family, as the village is now owned by the Clough-Williams Ellis Trust connected with the Crown.

This is worth noting, because the metanarrative aspects emerge with the Crown (the head of the SIS) being associated with Portmeirion, and the SIS in the film secreting 6 away to the Village for his imprisonment.  This connection is further driven home by the fact that the series based its story on an actual “retirement home” for British Spies, the Invair Lodge“cooler” according to George Markstein’s book, which claims such notions were so infinitely “deep state” they could only be told in fiction.  Markstein was also the script editor for The Prisoner, and his close connections to the security establishment suggest the same type of intelligence-scripting I have highlighted elsewhere.

Back to the story.  No. 6 quickly discovers the Village is a strictly communal, statist system in which unknown “wardens” hide amongst the docile, passive population, under complete control by No. 2, the antagonistic would-be handler of 6.  Number 2’s that fail to psychologically break 6 are inevitably replaced, and new forms of psychological manipulation, mind control and MKULRA-style de-programming and re-programming strategies are continually applied.  Each episode features some conspiracy on the part of the shadow establishment, ruling from atop the Village in their panopticon surveillance dome, over the completely managed social order.  Like 1984, all actions are video taped and recorded for review by No. 2 and his technocratic bureaucrats to determine 6’s reason for resignation.  Did he defect? Was he brainwashed? Was he involved in something illegal?

6 finds his psyche split into an alter, under intense mind control.

In the first few episodes, 6 is tempted with standard fare in the espionage world – honeypots, swallows, emotional manipulation, and mind control, none of which take effect.  Seeking escape, 6 continually eludes the manipulative strategies of the various 2’s, yet every escape attempt from the island is frustrated.  Supernaturally apprehended by the eerily cheesy “rovers,” the lava lamp spherical orbs emerge from the abyss to ever-foil 6’s escape, returning him to his mimicked apartment the next morning.  “What do you want?” 6 demands.  “We want information!” 2 replies with a hearty cackle, never divulging Number 1’s identity.  6’s resilience appears at first to be a noble image of the individualistic rebel, the lone wolf who stands for his own identity against the dastardly designs of the statist collective.  However, we will see by the end of the series and from McGoohan’s rare interview, that is not the case – the critique runs much deeper.

Worth mentioning in the early episodes is the presence of numerous technologies of social control and manipulation far ahead of their time.  Prescient, as most science fiction tends to be, references to fMRI machines that can read brainwaves, mind-wiping technologies and drugs reported to be had by DARPA in our time, and techniques for the manipulation of archetypes through psychoanalysis, and global brain style super computers that tabulate predictive algorithms to manipulate and control 6 are rife in the series.  Ultimately, the Village represents the modern world en toto, and McGoohan has identified the series’ famous bicycle logo as symbolic of man’s illusory belief in “technological progress,” which actually leads to his increasing enslavement.

Under the All-Seeing Eye of the Village.

The Village is the world under the control of a scientific dictatorship with total NSA-style-meets-Brave New World surveillance, creating a virtual prison planet predicted in Bentham’s panopticon.  Indeed, in conversations between 6 and 2, 2 identifies the Village as the Global Village, subject to a false dialectic in which the “two sides” of the Cold War coin are a manipulated dialectic.  This is elucidated symbolically when 6 is hauled before a kangaroo court under No. 2, himself sitting beneath an All-Seeing Eye. In this context, the eye signifies both surveillance and perhaps the control of the farcical legal system by secret societies.  Unaware of his violations, the Kafka-esque trials throughout the series result in “guilty” verdicts based on “democracy” and “public opinion,” laughably determined for the community by the technocratic oligarchy that controls the Village.

In Episode 3, “Hammer into Anvil,” Cold War dialectics are evident in 6’s plot to spark a democratic revolution.  As can be expected, the “666!” revolution was entirely the plan of 2 all along.  In this context, chants of “666!” are not accidental – the beast of humanistic statism mentioned in John’s Apocalypse has “666” standing for the “number of a man,” an antichrist, or a numerological image of Babel style world state, where a shadow elite sways a complete collective like a head steers a body (the body of the Hobbesian Leviathan beast).  Always, despite his exemplary fire to spark a revolution in the minds of men, 6 discovers his free individual plan to be co-opted by the establishment.  Since the collective and democratic revolutions proved fraudulent, perhaps the new revolution could be that of the great man, the true individual – or is this also a ruse?

“The whole earth as the village.”

The next several episodes feature 6 as subject to altered personalities in the vein of Dr. Estabrooks’ MKULTRA work, hypnosis, and mass Village mind control through television signals.  Again, revelation of the method emerges in 1967, revealing the means by which highly sophisticated mind control occurs in our day through television flicker rates which lull brainwaves into an alpha state, the lowest, most suggestible arena of brain activity.  The “General” behind this manipulation, as I mentioned, is actually an A.I. supercomputer of sorts, ultimately outsmarted by 6’s cunning question, “Why?” which a programmed computer can never process.  “Why?” will become the great secret to the series, where in the finale episode, when achieving his throne as the new king, the great individual, 6 begins to question his former interlocutors, “Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?” to which they can never give an adequate response.

Total NSA panopticon. Note the stellar and astronomical symbology on the dome of the surveillance grid.

Death is mentioned consistently through the series, which I read in multiple ways.  Is 6 dead, and is the Village a form of afterlife where 6 must suffer a kind of purgatory or final judgment?  In my estimation the solution is both – 6 is dead, and not only his death the secret of the series, as representative of modern man, and man as the great, libertarian individual, he is “dead.”  In Buddhism, the broken cup signifies death (the cup is already broken) and numerous times in the series, cups are broken, often by 6.  That 6 is dead is also shown by the supernatural elements of the Village which emerge in rare intervals, such as the rovers, “dem bones,” the emergence of long-dead historical figures like Napoleon, time freezing, and the memorable episode 7, dance of the dead, where 2 reveals to 6 the body in the morgue is “You.”  As the mob seeks to murder 6, 2 informs him, “They don’t know you’re already dead.”  Long speculated, the meaning is, as I said, twofold.  6 is dead, and so is the revolutionary modern man, who since the time of the French Revolution has believed himself to be “free from oppression” under liberte, egalite, fraternite!

Ultimately the death thesis is demonstrated in the allegorical episode, “The Girl Who Was Death,” where 6 traverses Europe seeking a mysterious German femme fatale who provokes war based around political assassinations.  In the end, Death is a daughter of the Frankish-Napoleonic power, the very power that has dominated Albion since the Norman invasion.  Could the series be hinting at the very thesis my friend and historian James Kelley has proposed, following the work of Fr. John Romanides, that the subjugation and decline of Europe is the result of the Frankish model of enslavement?  It is possible, as the Merovingian line seems to have gained a large amount of power over the last millennium.  The episode is oddly presented as a “fairy tale” that 6 tells to a bunch of children, that only children would believe the thesis that London’s enemies are going to create the ultimate terror threat of the bomb almighty.  Is 6 saying only foolish children believe such childish, contrived global crises?

Truth revealed: No. 6 is No. 1.

The “false flag” thesis is supported by episode 10, “It’s Your Funeral” (also supporting the death thesis), where 6 is set up to be framed for the assassination of 2.  Ultimately a plot of 2 himself against a new No. 2, the bomb plot is entirely contrived.  As all the episodes, 6 is able to out Psy Op the Psy Op masters themselves, which early on give the viewers hints as the real identity of the elusive. unknown No. 1 to whom all the Village is subject.  As the series comes to an astonishing close, 6 is brought underground into his deepest subconscious where he regresses to a childlike state under the original No. 2’s mind control psychoanalysis.  Like the 

SIS-connected Tavistock Institute

, the Village functions as the scientistic mechanism for converting the world into a gigantic test tube for the manipulation of the latest behavioral conditioning perfected through psychological warfare operations that originated in the world of espionage and warfare.

Regressing 6 to his earliest years, 2 remains unable to extract the ultimate reason for 6’s resignation.  The complicated finale depicts a 6 victorious over No. 2, now the greatest “individual” and the first successful “revolutionary.”  As 6 is enthroned, he sits in judgment on the rest of the Village, including all dualities and binary oppositions – judging the anarchists and the pacifists, the radicals and the conservatives.  The big reveal is that No. 1 is No. 6, a truth revealed in the opening of each episode, where 2’s response to 6’s question as to the identity of No. 1 is always met with an ambiguous reply that could be read in two ways – “You are number 6,” or “You are, number 6.”  Colin Cleary accurately explains the series’ anti-modern, anti-individualist stance as follows in his essay:

“The Girl Who Was Death.”

“In short, The Prisoner attacks modernity on the following grounds:

1. Modernity rests upon a materialistic metaphysics (all is matter), and champions materialism as a way of life (the focus on material comfort and satisfaction).
2. Modernity is spiritually empty (again, no church in the Village); it must deny or destroy what is higher in man.
3. Modernity destroys culture, tradition, and ethnic and national identity in the name of “progress” (called “multiculturalism” and “globalization” today). It is significant that we do not know where the Village is, for modern people are really “nowhere.” As Nietzsche’s “Madman” said, “Where are we headed? Are we not endlessly plunging—backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there an up and a down anymore? Do we not wander as if through an endless nothingness? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Hasn’t it grown colder?” (The Gay Science).
4. Modernity promises only trivial freedoms (e.g., the freedom to shop) while suppressing freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of association.
5. Modernity involves the belief that nature (including human nature) is infinitely malleable, open to the endless manipulation and “improvement” of science. In a 1977 interview with Canadian journalist Warner Troyer, McGoohan said, “I think we’re progressing too fast. I think that we should pull back and consolidate the things that we’ve discovered.”
6. Modernity systematically suppresses ideals that rise above material concerns: ideals like honor, and dignity, and loyalty (the Village is filled with traitors).
7. Modernity preaches a contradictory ethos of collectivism, and “looking out for No. 1.”
8. Modernity banishes the sacred, and profanes all through oppressive levity, irony, and irreverence (masking cynicism).
9. Modernity places physical security and comfort above the freedom to be self-determining, to be let alone, and to take risks.
10. Modernity fills the emptiness in people’s lives with noise (the TV and radio you can’t turn off). Silence might start people thinking, which could make them unhappy.

In addition to the hostility to religion, the Village also seems to be hostile to marriage, sex, and procreation. It is not clear whether there are any married couples in the Village. Sex is probably forbidden. No children are seen until “The Girl Who Was Death,” and those children are depicted as living in a kind of barracks. There is a touch of Plato’s Republic in The Prisoner.”

In the final analysis, The Prisoner is about modern man as a dead man.  In his final revolution, the revolution of the solitary, atomized individual unit, there is no “Why?” for this man to be the free individual he imagines himself to be.  He is just as much a prisoner of the dialectic as the collective he opposes, as he has no other higher aims than himself.  When he is enthroned as king, his final revolution results in the launching of a revolution that destroys The Village and launches an ICBM that will presumably destroy London.  Having overcome all his inner demons and the prison of his conscience (that is, the Village and its rovers are 6 grappling with his conscience in the afterlife), and realizing his worst enemy is not the system, the people, or the world, but himself, 6 returns to his old life as No. 1.

In fact, the address to 6’s apartment was always “No. 1.”  In like manner, modernity’s “revolution” in the global village, is the revolution of a meaningless numerological quantification where being “No. 1″ means nothing more than being No. 2 or No. 86 in a world divested of any meaning beyond the individual’s competing ego desires.  While The Prisoner is a treatise against the collective, it is also a warning to unfettered, meaningless individualism.  McGoohan foresaw the coming age of dystopian control where all of us would be tracked by a numerological cipher, under the “wandering stars” of the stellar luminaries that emblazon the heavens of the surveillance dome of the Village.  In biblical symbology, the celestial luminaries are guided by angelic intelligences, or Watchers that correspond to earthly potentates.  In the Village, the control grid of the Watchers is primarily technological and scientific, where man has been converted into a generic number in a long set of numbers, as if he were himself a cipher to be decoded and programmed.

“Numerology…we’re all becoming ciphers.” -Patrick McGoohan

 

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