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AMAZON STUDIOS LIKELY has another hit with “The Man In The High Castle,” one of many pilots being screened to Prime members. The show is smart, fun, and polished, and it currently sports a five-star user rating.
Produced by Ridley Scott, the show is based on a 1962 Philip K. Dick novel about a world in which the Nazis and Japanese won World War II. Of all of Dick’s classics, it was the only one to win science fiction’s preeminent Hugo Award. Scott, who directed another Dick adaptation in “Blade Runner,” started developing in 2010 what would surprisingly be the book’s first screen adaptation.
It takes place in 1962 in a conquered America that has been divided into the Greater Nazi Reich from the Atlantic to the Rockies, and the Japanese Pacific States on the Pacific Coast.
The opening scene shows a propaganda film about life in America, which chillingly demonstrates how the Americans might come to accept Nazi overlords.
“It’s a new day,” the narrator proclaims. “The sun rises in the east. Across our land men and women go to work in factories and farms providing for their families. Everyone has a job. Everyone knows the part they play keeping our country strong and safe. So today we give thanks to our brave leaders, knowing we are stronger and prouder and better.”
Only the end of the film explicitly references the Nazi takeover:
“Yes, it’s a new day in our proud land, but our greatest days may lie ahead. Sieg heil!”
Here’s a look at Nazi Times Square:
And Japanese San Francisco:
As the propaganda film suggests, aspects of life in Nazi/Japanese America are not bad, even as the overlords are brutally repress all resistance. The winners of the war — particularly the Germans, who developed the first atomic bomb — are living in a technological and economic boom as great as anything America saw in the real postwar era.
Given this rosy portrayal, it’s all the more shocking when there’s a reminder of how inhuman the Axis powers could be. In one scene, a volunteer for the resistance is driving through the middle of the country for the first time. He is talking with a Nazi police officer, who helped him change a flat tire, when ashes began falling like snow.
“Oh it’s the hospital,” the cop explains. “Tuesdays, they burn cripples, the terminally ill — drag on the state.”
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The EU elite telling us what to do.
@Quiet Goer: Great club. Glad to be a member.
@Quiet Goer: Protecting and expanding citizens rights. Trying to create a sustainable and self sufficient economy. All the while looking to improve the environment and the living conditions of people in Europe. Sounds like good governance to me
@Quiet Goer: then leave the EU then. We are not the Soviet Union, your free to leave at any time at your own discretion. Seems to me you have issues with authority. The Eu has its faults every country no matter how democratic they seems have difficulties.
@Quiet Goer: True. We were so much better off as British subjects.
@lelookcoco: says the English fella ha.
Enjoy your Brexit and stop living in a toxic past
@Quiet Goer: yes, if we don’t vote the way they want, we are made vote again!
@Alan Campbell: Does this really have to be explained again,we didn’t vote for the Same thing again.We voted against,changes were made and we voted again.
@lelookcoco: under British rule, Ireland, at the start of the last century was a constituent part of a parliamenyary democracy, only a handful around back then. Most of Europe wasn’t democratic.
We were not a “colony” of The Uk, we were a part of it, the same as Scotland and Wales were a part of it. They sent representatives to London as we did. 100 MP’s were Irish and we often held the balance of power
@Alan Campbell: Ireland has 13 MEP’s out of a total of 705 , so proportionally we had more representation in the UK Parliament, 100 out of 700, than in the current EU Parliament!
@Daniel Roche: the only changes were “assurances” about Irish neutrality, nothing in writing. I would trust Arthur Daly more than the corrupt EU!
@Alan Campbell: There have been no famines since Ireland joined the EU. That’s a pretty big plus in my book. Secondly, Ireland is far more democratic today than it ever was under English rule. You must have an anti Ireland agenda to write the nonsense you just did. The Daily Mail comments section might suit you better.
@Quiet Goer: give your favourite MEP your vote. That’s how it works. Or just get out and live in the UK.
@Daniel Roche: some people just don’t understand! They try to be edgy and make complete fo ols of themselves
I think we all have issues with Ireland economic model. Vultures and big businesses come in by up everything while FG/ FF smile. They pay little taxes while our government then rents the properties off them
@Niall Donnelly: very correct. But that is not an EU issue, that is an Irish governance issue. Please let us not go down the road of the UK, deflecting our own national governance issues onto the EU.
With so many other countries threatening to leave I give the EU five years at most before it comes crashing down. The UK leaving really brought it to it’s knees. One more and that will be it….
@John Edward: the EU is one big gravy train. The Court of Auditors havent signed off its accounts for years
@John Edward: I’ll happily put a bet on with you,say €200 and I’ll give you 10/1.
@Alan Campbell: nope, entirely incorrect.
https://fullfact.org/europe/did-auditors-sign-eu-budget/
@Daniel Roche: deal!
@Daniel Roche: deal. Rubs hands knowing that he’s won….
@John Edward: Points and laughs knowing that you’ve lost…
Bored just reading her name. That’s four words before I found a full stop. It sounds better in reverse.
No matter how good she delivers a speach. It won’t change reality. Germany will soon be depending on arctic gas. The environmental impact laying the Nord Stream 2 pipeline makes a mockery of Eamon Ryan’s war on open fires. Ireland’s new climate bill may attack farming family’s but data centres can consume 30% of our electricity buying wind farms to avoid paying carbon taxes. Winds farms levy’s on everyone’s electricty bills funded.
@leartius: von der leyon is a failed politician. That is why she is there along with all the other failed politicians … their governments want to get rid of them!
I like the idea of the European Union and the European Parliament. The European Commission, not so much.
@The Bolt: USE on the way
@The Bolt: the commission works pretty well as the executive branch. If it was taken from the parliament the executive would be french and German
@The Bolt: it’s the un-elected commission that has all the power! That is why democratic Britain left
@Alan Campbell: this unelected nonsense really bothers me. It’s not unelected – commissioners are appointed by the their respective national governments, who were elected to make decisions for that countrys citizens. It’s called representative democracy.
@Alan Campbell: you mean England and Wales, dragging Scotland and the north of Ireland with them.You really need to educate yourself.
@Alan Campbell: our civil service isn’t elected either.
@Daniel Roche: there wasn’t 4 referendums, there was ONE referendum. When a northerner was voting they were not voting for NI to stay or leave, on the ballot paper was ” Should the UK leave the EU.
The UK went into Europe together, so they should leave together
@DJ François: “Advisers advise, ministers decide”
@Dan Morgan: yes “appointed” not elected
We have the euro but the majority of our trade is to non euro countries for example 30 percent of our exports go to the USA, that’s more than any other single country.
Ireland joined the Euro for political reasons. It should have been for economic reasons
@Alan Campbell: Are Ireland better off in the EU or out of it,it’s a simple yes better in it,ye west brits are just mad.
@Daniel Roche: Celtic tiger followed by crash ie a roller coaster economy was caused by having the wrong monetary policy. You lose monetary policy when you lose your currency
@Alan Campbell: Monetary policy was using property to fund an unsustainable boom. FFs fault.
@DJ François: monetary policy (interest rates) were/are set by the ECB i.e. Germany. During the Celtic tiger, low interest rates suited Germany to gets its flagging economy going. Meanwhile in Ireland, low interest rates were adding fuel to an already over heated economy
Ah yes the EU, the greatest money laundering facilitator in the world allowing profits to be washed through multiple jurisdictions because frictionless borders are cool. The EU (aka France and Germany) complain about our CT rate yet both countries are constantly in court over state aid. The EU, who forced our weak leaders to repay German bond holders because their investment failed. What does Paddy do? Support the EU even more. Brexit is the worst thing to ever happen as it ends any chance of reform..
Meanwhile Irish news for the past 2 years has been focused on a senile old man and the orange bad guy…
We get what we deserve. Inequality in the EU has been rising massively. Globalisation is the biggest cancer to society where we have outsourced the work and manufacturing to third world countries.
I’m having a hard time judging which has been managed worse; the EU or this failed state we called Ireland run by a gombeen and double speak. Of course in Ireland, at least we elect our own idiots, unlike the decision makers in the EU, like Van Der Layen (who was coronated and not elected, before the bootlickers come in, the option for the EU parliament was to elect her or not, there was no choice of candidates)
Well done to everyone involved.
Van det leyen’s career in Germany was rubb/ish. All EU politicians are rubb/ish! That is why they are there! Their own governments want to get rid of them! The list is endless … Big Phil was a disaster in Irish Water, dispatch him to Europe! Pee Flynn was an embarrassment and a joke to FF, so banish him to europe
Nobody cares about a speach to make them feel important. We’ll pay either way and it will be the usual middle class that will foot the bill.
A very informative article. Nice one
Irish media coverage of the EU is spasmodic and selective. The institutions of the EU come across as being generally humdrum and devoid of excitement. It’s an image problem.
“Alexander Conway is a Researcher for the Global Europe Project at the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), focusing on internal EU policy developments and the EU’s role in the world.” Surprise, surprise!
Von der Lehen’s vision: The arms manufacturers and exporters club wants an army to expand its sales and the servile nations – even those who don’t profit from the industry – will volunteer to join up. Ireland should not be part of this dirty business.
Those who bombed Libya, Iraq, Syria etc and have troops in many countries across Africa and the Middle East are going to try and compete with the USA in their bloody business with the tools of FFGG cheering them on.
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