#michael madden

[devinsisland]

was randomly doodling the #guys and it turned into a sticker sheet. i love being a design student with unlimited access to printers and most of all i love queer criminals. freedom

[losinmortalesperdidos]

Rest in peace, my Man. Always in my heart.

[newstfionline]

Keeping up with the Kims: The Salt Lake blogger who watches North Korea’s elite

By Anna Fifield, Washington Post, December 22, 2017

SALT LAKE CITY--North Korea’s leadership might just be the toughest intelligence nut to crack.

Kim Jong Un hasn’t traveled outside the country since becoming its leader at the end of 2011. In those six years, he’s met only a handful of outsiders. They include the usual cast of communist-linked characters--Chinese, Cubans, Syrians--as well as the less-expected delegations led by American former basketball star Dennis Rodman.

Otherwise, there’s no human intelligence on Kim and his cronies. Just state propaganda and satellite photos and rumors. Lots of rumors.

But Michael Madden has become, as he puts it, an “accidental expert” on the men, and the occasional woman, who run the world’s most isolated country. From his couch in a dark basement here, Madden operates the website North Korea Leadership Watch, documenting the appearances--and the telling absences--of Kim and the people around him.

“This regime is the longest-lasting totalitarian system for a reason,” said Madden, an idiosyncratic 37-year-old who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the North Korean elite.

He’s prone to rattling off their family trees or minutiae about their educations or jobs--such as the previous positions held by the current director of the agricultural affairs department of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.

“Sure, there is a powerful strongman around which the system vests its attention and affection, but the strongman still needs subordinates who ensure that the trains launch on time,” he said. “So it is important we know some things about these subordinates, however expendable they might be.”

Through his website, which is now hosted by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and through his work for government agencies and contractors, Madden has been keeping tabs on the people at the top of the Kim regime for almost a decade.

“It’s just a matter of keeping track of 300 people at a time,” he said.

Madden has become influential in this small field--and some North Koreans have noticed. He was in contact with Kim Jong Nam until he was killed early this year, apparently on the orders of Kim Jong Un, his half brother.

Unusually, he also talks to North Koreans inside the regime. In fact, while a Washington Post reporter was in Pyongyang for the Workers’ Party congress last year, it was Madden, sitting 6,000 miles away in Salt Lake City, who was telling her what agenda item the delegates in the hall across town had come to.

“He does a good job pulling together available open-source material, and he is one of the people that I follow on nitty-gritty North Korea leadership issues,” said Jung H. Pak, who until recently was a Korea analyst at the CIA and is now at the Brookings Institution.

Although he spends all his time in a darkened room drinking venti cups of coffee with an extra shot, Madden is not your stereotypical intel nerd.

He has tattoos of the Star Wars character Boba Fett and a Japanese lucky cat on his arms, and barely goes a sentence without swearing. In forging analogies about North Korea, he’s prone to allude to everyone from Bette Midler to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Madden happened upon North Korea by an unusual route.

When he was a student at Suffolk University in Boston, he had a part-time job in the administration section, which led to him traveling to Prague, where the university had a satellite program. The Czech Republic was also a base for many North Koreans, either as diplomats or students.

He got interested in North Korea, and in 2006, when the collaborative mapping site Wikimapia was launched, he started identifying sites in North Korea for it. Then he moved into words, writing a piece for an academic journal about the Ryugyong Hotel, an ill-fated skyscraper that stands as a pyramid-shaped blight on the Pyongyang skyline but has never opened, because of faulty construction and a lack of investment.

One thing led to another, and back in Prague, he was invited to a local restaurant frequented by North Koreans smoking and playing checkers. Slowly, he started making North Korean contacts.

He started his website in September 2009--fortuitously, just at the time a young man called Kim Jong Un was emerging as his father’s successor.

Madden began documenting Kim’s public appearances with his father and pulling together media reports about the third-generation leader and the people around him, from both inside and outside North Korea. Madden does not speak Korean, so relies on translations.

He memorizes details about all these people--and types out reports from the state-run Korean Central News Agency word by word, instead of copying and pasting, to help the information stick in his head.

“I’m interested in all the mundane details,” he said. “I’m a very elderly millennial.”

But Madden’s work has become increasingly important as the North Korean leadership has changed under Kim. His wife, Sierra, has started writing for the site, too.

“North Korea doesn’t have an order of succession or seniority system like the U.S. government. There’s no parliamentary system with prime ministers, whips and secretaries of state,” he said.

Instead, North Korea has a Politburo containing the country’s top 25 officials. “It was ceremonial under Kim Jong Il, but in the Kim Jong Un system, it has become much more important. The politburo is very much the center of power.”

The upper echelons have been closely watched for signs of Kim Jong Un’s strength--or otherwise--as he has consolidated his leadership after only a two-year apprenticeship under his father, Kim Jong Il.

Just as people have entered the inner circle, they have also dropped out of it. Kim Jong Un has purged and sometimes executed some of his closest aides, including men who helped him make the transition into power. Kim had his own uncle executed (using an antiaircraft gun) for apparently amassing too much of his own power.

The latest rumor revolves around Hwang Pyong So, who had been elevated to be head of the army’s General Political Bureau, which mobilizes the military for Kim. South Korea’s intelligence service reported last month that Hwang, who was often seen at Kim’s side during missile launches, had fallen from grace. Now, it’s saying he’s been sent to a reeducation camp.

But a sizable number of people reported purged or executed have shown up just fine some months later, so Madden likes to sit on these reports and wait for proof. If the officials reappear after six months, it means they’ve been “reeducated.” But if they are edited out of videos, it generally means they’re no longer of this world.

“I’ve just got to put it all together,” Madden said of his work assembling small pieces of information. “It’s like Mr. Potato Head.”

[stllimelight]

Take Ten with Michael Madden

Take Ten with Michael Madden

Chiropractor-Turned-Playwright Strikes a Chord with Romantic Comedy

By Lynn Venhaus Managing Editor Actor-playwright Michael Madden could be called a late bloomer.  He did not start acting until five years ago. Two years ago, he wrote his first play, and people like it – a lot. “Maybe This Time” won an audience award in San Diego and sold out every performance last month in St. Louis.

The…

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[mikemadd1-blog]

(MiCHael MaDDen)

[geneticandunattainable]

Not a person, but a path of least resistance.

[offthescreensa]

#FilmReview: #BastilleDay 7/10

This action adventure is fun, but not mind blowing

CAST: Idris Elba, Richard Madden, Kelly Reilly

DIRECTOR: James Watkins

THE STORY

When a young pick pocket, Michael (Richard Madden), steals a worthless bag from a woman with a teddy bear in it, he drops it in the trash, thinking nothing of it. Moments later it explodes, killing several people and starting a chain of events. CIA agent Briar (Idris Elba), a bit of a loose cannon, working in Paris, is caught up in the chase for the suspected terrorist, but when he catches up to the man he realises that he’s not what they think, and that there’s a deeper conspiracy at work. They team up to find the real culprits to the bombing and end up embroiled in an elaborate crime caper they need to stop.

THE VERDICT

I’m a fan of these buddy cop type films. They are filled with funny one-liners, witty comments and a good dollop of action thrown in. This film is no different. Madden is the one that offers the witty comments and funny one-liners, while Elba is responsible for the action the whole way through.

I liked Madden. He’s handsome and charming and funny and carries the role of the thief with the heart of gold very well.

I’ve loved pretty much everything Elba’s done, but he really didn’t have much to work with here. He’s very good at kicking butt, but as for acting, without an actual script to work with he can only do so much.

If you’re a fan of explosions and buddy cop genre films then you’ll enjoy Bastille Day, but if you want to see a good spy-stopping-a-terrorist-in-Paris film you should probably rather watch From Paris with Love. It’s better, funnier and full of more action, but, Bastille Day is not a bad second choice.

[leninsbody]

North Korea leader Kim sets five-year economic plan, vows nuclear restraint

North Korea leader Kim sets five-year economic plan, vows nuclear restraint

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PYONGYANG North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would not use nuclear weapons unless its sovereignty is infringed by others with nuclear arms, in a speech broadcast on Sunday, and set a five-year plan to boost the secretive state’s moribund economy.

The North “will faithfully fulfil its obligation for non-proliferation and strive for global denuclearization”, Kim said on…

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