- Arts

Sting - Shape of my Heart

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:39:12 -0600

Renaissance Drawings

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:12:34 -0600

Iraq's Antiquities Still Targeted By Looters

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:09:09 -0600

Earthships - Pockets of Freedom

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:57:40 -0700

What Is It Like to Teach Inner City Black Students?

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:23:50 -0700

"Anyone who teaches blacks soon learns that they have a completely different view of government from whites. Once I decided to fill 25 minutes by having students write about one thing the government should do to improve America. I gave this question to three classes totaling about 100 students, approximately 80 of whom were black. My white students came back with generally “conservative” ideas. “We need to cut off people who don’t work,” was the most common suggestion. Nearly every black gave a variation on the theme of “We need more government services.”

My students had only the vaguest notion of who pays for government services. For them, it was like a magical piggy bank that never goes empty. One black girl was exhorting the class on the need for more social services and I kept trying to explain that people, real live people, are taxed for the money to pay for those services. “Yeah, it come from whites,” she finally said. “They stingy anyway.”"

The fruits of a carefully planned cultural genocide laid bare in modern day America. The letter below is just one example of the social rot that festers in the crevices of the politically derived dialogue of forced 'equality' and social harmony. The ploy of state welfare for any other means than as a temporary safety net has created an entire underclass of social dysfunction; the sense of entitlement among the 'socialized poor' is an aberration of human perception. The belief is that somehow the individual need not be productive or creative, since the state has guaranteed an indefinite economic prop.

The groundwork has been laid, the racial tension and animosity within the urban and rural poor of America, divided as they are by various colours and creeds of ignorance, can be described as a coiled weapon that is set to strike under conditions of social and economic desperation. Few would recognize however that this racial segregation and cultural ignorance is by design, the long term project of social planners who feared strong ethnic communities that were free from dependence on the state structure. Via a very successful campaign of assassination, economic subterfuge, educational malice, and state led drug running the 'minority' populations of America have largely accepted their imposed stereotype. As such they have become what they believe they are, based on what they have been told they are.

Until recently I taught at a predominantly black high school in a southeastern state.

The mainstream press gives a hint of what conditions are like in black schools, but only a hint. Expressions journalists use like “chaotic” or “poor learning environment” or “lack of discipline” do not capture what really happens. There is nothing like the day-to-day experience of teaching black children and that is what I will try to convey.

..

Blacks, on average, are the most directly critical people I have ever met: “Dat shirt stupid. Yo’ kid a bastard. Yo’ lips big.” Unlike whites, who tread gingerly around the subject of race, they can be brutally to the point. Once I needed to send a student to the office to deliver a message. I asked for volunteers, and suddenly you would think my classroom was a bastion of civic engagement. Thirty dark hands shot into the air. My students loved to leave the classroom and slack off, even if just for a few minutes, away from the eye of white authority. I picked a light-skinned boy to deliver the message. One very black student was indignant: “You pick da half-breed.” And immediately other blacks take up the cry, and half a dozen mouths are screaming, “He half-breed.”

For decades, the country has been lamenting the poor academic performance of blacks and there is much to lament. There is no question, however, that many blacks come to school with a serious handicap that is not their fault. At home they have learned a dialect that is almost a different language. Blacks not only mispronounce words; their grammar is often wrong. When a black wants to ask, “Where is the bathroom?” he may actually say “Whar da badroom be?” Grammatically, this is the equivalent of “Where the bathroom is?” And this is the way they speak in high school. Students write the way they speak, so this is the language that shows up in written assignments.

...

Anyone who teaches blacks soon learns that they have a completely different view of government from whites. Once I decided to fill 25 minutes by having students write about one thing the government should do to improve America. I gave this question to three classes totaling about 100 students, approximately 80 of whom were black. My white students came back with generally “conservative” ideas. “We need to cut off people who don’t work,” was the most common suggestion. Nearly every black gave a variation on the theme of “We need more government services.”

My students had only the vaguest notion of who pays for government services. For them, it was like a magical piggy bank that never goes empty. One black girl was exhorting the class on the need for more social services and I kept trying to explain that people, real live people, are taxed for the money to pay for those services. “Yeah, it come from whites,” she finally said. “They stingy anyway.”

“Many black people make over $50,000 dollars a year and you would also be taking away from your own people,” I said. She had an answer to that: “Dey half breed.” The class agreed. I let the subject drop.

Many black girls are perfectly happy to be welfare queens. On career day, one girl explained to the class that she was going to have lots of children and get fat checks from the government. No one in the class seemed to have any objection to this career choice.

Surprising attitudes can come out in class discussion. We were talking about the crimes committed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and I brought up the rape of a young girl in the bathroom of the Superdome. A majority of my students believed this was a horrible crime but a few took it lightly. One black boy spoke up without raising his hand: “Dat no big deal. They thought they is gonna die so they figured they have some fun. Dey jus’ wanna have a fun time; you know what I’m sayin’?”

My department head once asked all the teachers to get a response from all students to the following question: “Do you think it is okay to break the law if it will benefit you greatly?” By then, I had been teaching for a while and was not surprised by answers that left a young, liberal, white woman colleague aghast. “Yeah” was the favorite answer. As one student explained, “Get dat green.”

...

One point on which all blacks agree is that everything is “racis’.” This is one message of liberalism they have absorbed completely. Did you do your homework? “Na, homework racis’.” Why did you get an F on the test? “Test racis’.”

I was trying to teach a unit on British philosophers and the first thing the students noticed about Bentham, Hobbes, and Locke was “Dey all white! Where da black philosophers’?” I tried to explain there were no blacks in eighteenth century Britain. You can probably guess what they said to that: “Dat racis’!” One student accused me of deliberately failing him on a test because I didn’t like black people.

“Do you think I really hate black people?”

“Yeah.”

“Have I done anything to make you feel this way? How do you know?”

“You just do.”

“Why do you say that?”

He just smirked, looked out the window, and sucked air through his teeth. Perhaps this was a regional thing, but the blacks often sucked air through their teeth as a wordless expression of disdain or hostility.

My students were sometimes unable to see the world except through the lens of their own blackness.

...

One of my students was a notorious drug dealer. Everyone knew it. He was 19 years old and in eleventh grade. Once he got a score of three out of 100 on a test. He had been locked up four times since he was 13. One day, I asked him, “Why do you come to school?” He wouldn’t answer. He just looked out the window, smiled, and sucked air through his teeth. His friend Yidarius ventured an explanation: “He get dat green and get dem females.”

“What is the green?” I asked. “Money or dope?” “Both,” said Yidarius with a smile.

A very fat student interrupted from across the room: “We get dat lunch,” Mr. Jackson. “We gotta get dat lunch and brickfuss.” He means the free breakfast and lunch poor students get every day. “Nigga, we know’d you be lovin’ brickfuss!” shouts another student.

Some readers may believe that I have drawn a cruel caricature of black students. After all, according to official figures some 85 percent of them graduate. It would be instructive to know how
many of those scraped by with barely a C- record. They go from grade to grade and they finally get their diplomas because there is so much pressure on teachers to push them through. It saves money to move them along, the school looks good and the teachers look good.

Many of these children should have been failed but the system would crack under their weight if they were all held back.

How did my experiences make me feel about blacks? Ultimately, I lost sympathy for them. In so many ways they seem to make their own beds.

...

I have a friend who teaches elementary school and she tells me that every week the students get a new diversity lesson, shipped in fresh from some bureaucrat’s office in Washington or the state capital. She showed me the materials for one week: a large poster, about the size of a forty-two inch flat-screen television. It shows an utterly diverse group—I mean diverse: handicapped, Muslim, Jewish, effeminate, poor, rich, brown, slightly brown, yellow, etc.—sitting at a table, smiling gaily, accomplishing some undefined task. The poster comes with a sheet of questions the teacher is supposed to ask. One might be: “These kids sure look different, but they look happy. Can you tell me which one in the picture is an American?”

Some eight-year-old, mired in ignorance, will point to a white child like himself. “That one.”

The teacher reads from the answer, conveniently printed along with the question. “No, Billy, all these children are Americans. They are just as American as you.”

This is what happens at predominately white, middle-class, elementary schools everywhere. Elementary school teachers love All of the Colors of the Race, by award-winning children’s poet Arnold Adoff.

These are some of the lines they read to the children: “Mama is chocolate … Daddy is vanilla … Me (sic) is better … It is a new color. It is a new flavor. For love. Sometimes blackness seems too black for me, and whiteness is too sickly pale; and I wish every one were golden.”

RYAN (Animated Short)

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:24:16 -0700

This short film captures in a unique way the wounded and fragmented nature of our consensus reality; exaggerated biology, constricting thought bands, the symbolization of impulse and craving, all depicted in the drab confines of what could be an old age asylum. An interesting work.

Send Your Love Into The Future

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:48:43 -0700

The Illusions of Film

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:22:07 -0700

Temple Grandin - "The world needs all kinds of minds"

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:12:33 -0700

I wrote this the other day and it applies directly to the talk given above:

"Everything in society is therefore going through restructuring, and the backdrop of this restructuring is an evolutionary process of genetic change; mutation, alteration and manipulation. There is a causal dance occurring and it's being channeled through genetic sequences and out into the world. The battle over the magnetic center, the gravity of earth reality, is happening in that 4th dimension.... Society is beginning to break, and its breaking because of the static nature of its perceptual locust. Socially speaking, the concreteness of old concerns and false assumptions is working as an extreme impediment to human creative expansion, and like a shell, is being broken and cast off."

Sir James Goldsmith - The Trap

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:17:26 -0700

Source: Solari

You are an opponent of the project for single currency. Why?

The effects of a single currency go far beyond the economy. They would transform the political structure of Europe as well as the stability of its societies.

A currency is both an economic tool and a reflection of the economic and social condition of a society. The quantity of available money must be determined in a way which does not lead to unacceptable levels of inflation, deflation or other disruptions. Obviously, a single currency would mean that the principal economic strategy of each European nation would also need to be determined centrally. It would be impossible to have a single currency while at the same time maintaining different economic programmes in each of twelve nations.

The true purpose of proposing a single currency is to force through the creation of a unitary European state while pretending to promote a purely economic idea. It is yet another example of the Eurocrats acting by stealth so as to achieve their aim of a homogenized European union. Furthermore, a single currency would disrupt European societies. To understand the effects of a single currency imposed uniformly on both rich and poor regions, look at Italy.

The economy of northern Italy is highly competitive compared to the remainder of Europe, whereas that of the south is not. Obviously, the currency used in the south cannot be adjusted relative to that of the north in order to reflect the differences in their economies because the south and the north maintain the same currency. The economy in the south stagnated and unemployment increased. Unemployed southerners moved north to seek work and to stem this migration Italy subsidized investment in the south to create jobs. To do this, special institutions were formed such as the Cassa del Mezzogiorno and its successors, through which were channeled massive transfers of funds to the south. The policy failed. Much of the investment went into useless bureaucratic mega-projects and much was stolen or diverted for political purposes. Instead of generating employment, the subsidies generated corruption. They also failed to stop migration, which continued to uproot southern communities and to overpopulate and destabilize those in the north. This is a typical case of mutual poisoning. Families and communities in the south are destroyed and urban slums and social crisis develop in the north.

This fiasco caused great resentment in northern Italy, resulting in the formation of the Lombardy League, whose platform is to re-establish autonomy for the north. The League has become an important political movement and is part of the present governing coalition.

These subsidies and migrations took place within the same nation, yet they aroused strong separatist passions. Imagine how much greater would be the resentment if they took place between different nations, such as Greece and the Netherlands or Spain and Germany. Undoubtedly, there would be great tensions if at some time in the future Greece and Spain—or indeed any other nation—were unable to maintain the standards of economic stability prevalent in the Netherlands or Germany. With a single currency, no individual nation would be able to adjust the value of its currency to reflect its own economic realities. The results would be the same as in Italy, but on a much larger and more devastating scale: uprooting of the peoples of unsuccessful nations; mass migration; destabilization of the towns in successful nations; emergence of centrifugal forces which could create possibly violent separatist movements and pull Europe apart.

From the book The Trap by Sir James Goldsmith

Tribes Continue Fight After Vedanta Suffers Another Setback

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:54:40 -0700

NEW DELHI - Indian tribals campaigning to stop Vedanta Resources (VED.L) from mining their ancestral homeland vowed on Thursday to persist with their fight as another investor sold its stake in the company over ethical concerns.

Britain's Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust sold its 1.9 million pound share in the London-listed corporate, citing concerns about Vedanta, which it said was "pushing industrialisation to the detriment of the lives of local people."

Vedanta has denied allegations that its planned bauxite mine in eastern India would violate the rights of thousands of poor indigenous tribes people, saying that all its projects are conducted within the law and using international best practices.

"We are disappointed by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust's decision to sell their holding in Vedanta," company spokesman Pavan Kaushik said.

"Vedanta remains committed to pursuing its investments in a responsible manner, respecting the environment and human rights. We will continue to engage closely with the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust to address the concerns they have raised."

This is the latest blow to Vedanta which has now seen four organisations dis-invest since 2007, citing concerns over the project in the impoverished mineral-rich state of Orissa.

"The fact that four international organisations have decided to take their money out of Vedanta proves that our seven-year struggle is valid," Kumti Majhi, a 62-year-old tribesman living close to the mine site, told reporters in New Delhi.

"We feel vindicated and we will continue our fight, until more and more people see what Vedanta is doing and pull out all their support ... Vedanta will eventually have to leave."

Majhi said they were planning street protests and demonstrations and would continue to petition Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Earlier this month, the Church of England sold its 3.6 million pound stock in the company, joining former shareholders, the Norway Pension Fund and Edinburgh-based investment fund Martin Currie, who have also withdrawn.

Vedanta, listed on the FTSE 100 top shares index, wants to mine bauxite for its alumina refinery in the Niyamgiri mountain.

But the project has been stalled since 2005, opposed by activists who say it will rob around 8,000 indigenous tribes people of their ancestral home and traditional way of life.

...

India's Supreme Court approved the project in August 2008 after years of legal wrangles and Vedanta is now awaiting clearance from India's environment ministry.

Related Video

The Story Of A Sacred Mountain

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:31:02 -0700

"No people is better than another"

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 09:40:30 -0700

Will Google's Translator Phone Lead Us to Babylon or Babble On?

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:47:40 -0700

Source: Fast Company

Google's revealed it's working on extensions to its smartphone voice-control powers, debuted in the Nexus One, that'll automatically translate between languages. It's the stuff of pure utopian science fiction. But is it a good idea?

Google's plans are to enhance the remote server-processed speech recognition systems in the Nexus One to include automatic, fast and accurate machine translation between languages, with a synthetic voice output.

Sci-fi fans will of course immediately associate this idea with two classics of the genre: The Star Trek Universal Translator (a handy way of explaining away different language issues between alien races) and the Babel Fish, fabulous creation from the mind behind The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams. Both things essentially do the same task--they automatically translate what other people say to a person in alien tongues into their own language, and do the same back when the user speaks aloud. To this end, they are absolutely the same in concept as Google's translator phone.

And though this sounds like an insanely useful idea, the cultural impact could be absolutely shocking. For example, if Google's device succeeds, and is useful and ubiquitous (in other words, nearly everyone ends up using it, or a competing service)--nobody would need learn a foreign language. "Hooray!" you may be thinking, but this isn't necessarily a good thing. Because language plays such a fundamental part in connecting each of us as thinking creatures with the world around us, that the subtle nuances of language (which are different even in similar tongues, say the Latin-derived Spanish and Portuguese) actually shape how we think about the world. Learning something of how somebody else speaks from a foreign country actually helps you to understand their mindset a little. And if the average Joe on the street never learns a foreign language anymore (because it's a very tricky thing to do, and Google's just doing it for you, so why bother?) then that subtle understanding will be lost.

But in the Babel Fish itself is the biggest warning. As Adams wrote, as well as being "probably the oddest thing in the Universe" the "poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation." Of course Adams invention is fictional, but he was a keen observer of the human condition, and we should ask the question "Is mankind ready for Google's invention?" What will happen when the first manslaughter case occurs as the result of a mis-translation from one of Google's devices? Will we learn more about what's going on around us when abroad on holiday than is actually good for our souls? And so on.

I'm not against the idea, but I think you should at least consider the value in language barriers and the hard work it takes to get over them. You can bet that the big-players in semantics, linguistics and international relations will weigh in on this news pretty fast, and that the debate will be incredibly charged and complex. It may even be suggested that Google cannot technically achieve its goal. But if anyone has vast amounts of cloud-based computing power available, and a suite of experts able to program them into clever pattern recognition and processing, it's Google. I wouldn't be surprised to see Google rolling out a limited version of this service inside a year or two, on the Nexus Three, say, and then we'll just have to see how well a globally-chatty population works out.

The Call From Michael Jackson I'll Never Forget

nospam@example.com (Angelo) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:39:31 -0700

For those of you who have yet to see 'This Is It', I recommend that you do, the extras alone are worth the price of the DVD.

Michael Jackson, the angel of music died on my birthday. I'll never forget the feeling of loss, the sadness that enveloped me when I knew that this human genius, this long suffering angel, who was viciously tormented by the media, passed on to the other side. The outpouring of emotion in me was a little surprising in its strength, I knew in my heart that a great being had blessed and left the earth a little too soon.

For those of you who have been duped by the media portrayals, the absurd accusations, perhaps you might be willing to affect another look, without the innuendo and concocted contexts. Michael Jackson was a man of deep meaning and profound sensitivity, characteristics that are hardly recognized, let alone accommodated, in a world bent on magnifying quirks or eccentricities without giving respect to their creative nature.

I've included the entire article, as well as a few Michael Jackson videos below.

Source: The Telegraph

By Paul Theroux

After the eminent American writer was given a rare tour of Michael Jackson's fabled ranch, the singer telephoned him in the early hours for a chat. Here, Paul Theroux recalls an unguarded conversation that touched on fame, childhood and Biblical betrayal.

* I heard the news today, oh boy, that Michael Jackson had a heart attack – and died of cardiac arrest, at the age of 50, in Los Angeles. I am reminded of a long conversation I had with him at four o'clock one morning, and of my visit to Neverland. The visit came first, the conversation a few weeks later, on the phone.

Neverland, a toytown wilderness of carnival rides and doll houses and zoo animals and pleasure gardens, lay inside a magnificent gateway on a side road in a rural area beyond Santa Barbara. Nosing around, I saw pinned to the wall of the sentry post an array of strange faces, some of them mugshots, all of them undesirables, with names and captions such as "Believes she is married to Mr Jackson" and "Might be armed" and "Has been loitering near gate".

A road lined with life-sized bronzed statuary – skipping boys, gamboling animals – led past an artificial lake and a narrow-gauge railway to Michael's house. Neverland occupied an entire 3,000-acre valley, yet very little of it was devoted to human habitation – just the main house with its dark shingles and mullioned windows, and a three-bedroom guesthouse. The rest was given over to a railway terminus, Katharine Station, named after Jackson's mother, a formidable security headquarters, various funhouses, a cinema (with windowed bedrooms instead of balcony seats), and almost indefinable sites, one with teepees like an Indian camp.

And sprawling over many acres, the Jackson zoo of bad-tempered animals. The giraffes were understandably skittish. In another enclosure, rocking on its thick legs, was Gypsy, a moody five-ton elephant, which Elizabeth Taylor had given as a present to Michael. The elephant seemed to be afflicted with the rage of heightened musth. "Don't go anywhere near him," the keeper warned me.

In the reptile house, with its frisbee-shaped frogs and fat pythons, both a cobra and a rattlesnake had smashed their fangs against the glass of their cage trying to bite me. The llamas spat at me, as llamas do, but even in the ape sanctuary, "AJ", a big bristly, shovel-mouthed chimp, had spat in my face, and Patrick the orang-utan had tried to twist my hand. "And don't go anywhere near him, either."

In the wider part of the valley, the empty fairground rides were active – twinkling, musical – but empty: Sea Dragon, the Neverland Dodgem cars, the Neverland carrousel playing Michael's own song, Childhood ("Has anyone seen my childhood?…"). Even the lawns and flower beds were playing music; loudspeakers disguised as big, grey rocks buzzed with showtunes, filling the valley with unstoppable Muzak that drowned the chirping of wild birds. In the middle of it, a Jumbotron, its screen the size of a drive-in movie, showed a cartoon, two crazy-faced creatures quacking miserably at each other – all of this very bright in the cloudless California dusk, not a soul watching.

Later that day, I boarded a helicopter with Elizabeth Taylor – I was at Neverland interviewing her – and flew over the valley. It says something for Miss Taylor's much-criticised voice that I could hear her clearly over the helicopter noise. Girlish, imploring, piercing, the loud yack-yack-yack of the titanium rotor blades, she clutched her dog, a Maltese named Sugar, and screamed: "Paul, tell the pilot to go around in a circle, so we can see the whole ranch!"

Even without my relaying the message – even with his ears muffled by headphones – her voice knifed through to the pilot. He lifted us high enough into the peach-coloured sunset so that Neverland seemed even more toy-like.

"That's the gazebo, where Larry [Fortensky, her seventh husband] and I tied the knot," Elizabeth said, moving her head in an ironising wobble. Sugar blinked through prettily-combed white bangs which somewhat resembled Elizabeth's own white hair. "Isn't the railway station darling? Over there is where Michael and I have picnics," and she indicated a clump of woods on a cliff. "Can we go around one more time?"

Neverland Valley revolved slowly beneath us, the shadows lengthening from the pinky-gold glow slipping from the sky.

Even though no rain had fallen for months, the acres of lawns watered by underground sprinklers were deep green. Here and there, like toy soldiers, uniformed security people patrolled on foot, or on golf carts; some stood sentry duty – for Neverland was also a fortress.

"What's that railway station for?" I asked.

"The sick children."

"And all those rides?"

"The sick children."

"Look at all those tents…" Hidden in the woods, it was my first glimpse at the collection of tall teepees.

"The Indian village. The sick children love that place."

From this height, I could see that this valley of laboriously recaptured childhood pleasure was crammed with more statuary than I'd seen from ground level. Lining the gravel roads and the golf-cart paths were little winsome bronzes of flute players, rows of grateful, grinning kiddies, clusters of hand-holding tots, some with banjos, some with fishing rods; and large bronze statues, too, like the centrepiece of the circular drive in front of Michael's house, a statue of Mercury (god of merchandise and merchants), rising 30 feet, with winged helmet and caduceus, and all balanced on one tippy-toe, the last of the syrupy sunset lingering on his big bronze buttocks, making his bum look like a buttered muffin.

The house at Neverland was filled with images, many of them depicting Michael life-sized, elaborately costumed, in heroic poses with cape, sword, ruffed collar, crown. The rest were an example of a sort of obsessive iconography: images of Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross, Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin – and for that matter of Mickey Mouse and Peter Pan, all of whom, over the years, in what is less a life than a metamorphosis, he had come physically to resemble.

"So you're Wendy and Michael is Peter?" I had asked Elizabeth Taylor afterwards.

"Yeah. Yeah. There's a kind of magic between us."

The friendship started when, out of the blue, Michael offered her tickets for one of his Thriller Tour concerts – indeed, she asked for 14 tickets. But the seats were in a glass-enclosed VIP box, so far from the stage "you might as well have been watching it on TV". Instead of staying, she led her large party home.

Hearing that she'd left the concert early, Michael called the next day in tears apologising for the bad seats. He stayed on the line, they talked for two hours. And then they talked every day. Weeks passed, the calls continued. Months went by. "Really, we got to know each other on the telephone, over three months."

One day Michael suggested that he might drop by. Elizabeth said fine. He said: "May I bring my chimpanzee?" Elizabeth said, "Sure. I love animals." Michael showed up holding hands with the chimp, Bubbles.

"We have been steadfast ever since," Elizabeth said.

"Do you see much of Michael?"

"More of him than people realise – more than I realise," she said. They went in disguise to movies in Los Angeles cinemas, sitting in the back, holding hands. Before I could frame a more particular question, she said: "I love him. There's a vulnerability inside him which makes him the more dear. We have such fun together. Just playing."

Or role-playing – her Wendy to his Peter. In the hallway of her house, a large Michael Jackson portrait was inscribed "To my True Love Elizabeth. I'll love you Forever, Michael".

She gave him a live elephant. Dr Arnie Klein, his dermatologist, showed me a birthday snapshot taken in Las Vegas, Michael looking distinctly chalky as he presented Elizabeth with a birthday present, an elephant-shaped bauble, football-sized, covered in jewels.

What began as a friendship with Michael Jackson developed into a kind of cause in which Elizabeth Taylor became almost his only defender.

"What about his" – and I fished for a word – "eccentricity? Does that bother you?"

"He is magic. And I think all truly magical people have to have that genuine eccentricity." There is not an atom in her consciousness that allows her the slightest negativity on the subject of Jacko. "He is one of the most loving, sweet, true people I have ever loved. He is part of my heart. And we would do anything for each other."

This Wendy with a vengeance, who was a wealthy and world-famous pre-adolescent, supporting her parents from the age of nine, said she easily related to Michael, who was also a child star, and denied a childhood, as well as viciously abused by his father. There was a "Katherine" steam engine, and a "Katherine Street" at Neverland; there was no "Joseph Street", nor anything bearing his father's name.

'He'll talk to you if I ask him to," Elizabeth had told me. And at a prearranged signal, Michael called me, at four one morning. There was no secretarial intervention of "Mr Jackson on the line". The week's supermarket tabloids' headlines were "Jacko on suicide watch" and "Jacko in loony bin", and one with a South Africa dateline, "Wacko Jacko King of Pop Parasails with 13-year-old". In fact, he was in New York City, where he was recording a new album. This was 10 years ago.

My phone rang and I heard: "This is Michael Jackson." The voice was breathy, unbroken, boyish – tentative, yet tremulously eager and helpful, not the voice of a 40-year-old. In contrast to this lilting sound, its substance was denser, like a blind child giving you explicit directions in darkness.

"How would you describe Elizabeth?" I asked.

"She's a warm cuddly blanket that I love to snuggle up to and cover myself with. I can confide in her and trust her. In my business, you can't trust anyone."

"Why is that?"

"Because you don't know who's your friend. Because you're so popular, and there's so many people around you. You're isolated, too. Becoming successful means that you become a prisoner. You can't go out and do normal things. People are always looking at what you're doing."

"Have you had that experience?"

"Oh, lots of times. They try to see what you're reading, and all the things you're buying. They want to know everything. There are always paparazzi downstairs. They invade my privacy. They twist reality. They're my nightmare. Elizabeth is someone who loves me – really loves me."

"I suggested to her that she was Wendy and you're Peter."

"But Elizabeth is also like a mother – and more than that. She's a friend. She's Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, the Queen of England and Wendy. We have great picnics. It's so wonderful to be with her. I can really relax with her, because we've lived the same life and experienced the same thing."

"Which is?"

"The great tragedy of childhood stars. We like the same things. Circuses. Amusement parks. Animals."

And there was their shared fame and isolation.

"It makes people do strange things. A lot of our famous luminaries become intoxicated because of it – they can't handle it. And your adrenaline is at the zenith of the universe after a concert – you can't sleep. It's maybe two in the morning and you're wide awake. After coming off stage, you're floating."

"How do you handle that?"

"I watch cartoons. I love cartoons. I play video games. Sometimes I read."

"You mean you read books?"

"Yeah. I love to read short stories and everything."

"Any in particular?"

"Somerset Maugham," he said quickly, and then, pausing at each name: "Whitman. Hemingway. Twain."

"What about those video games?"

"I love X-Man. Pinball. Jurassic Park. The martial arts ones – Mortal Kombat."

"I played some of the video games at Neverland," I said. "There was an amazing one called Beast Buster."

"Oh, yeah, that's great. I pick each game. That one's maybe too violent, though. I usually take some with me on tour."

"How do you manage that? The video game machines are pretty big, aren't they?"

"Oh, we travel with two cargo planes."

"Have you written any songs with Elizabeth in mind?"

"Childhood."

"Is that the one with the line, 'Has anyone seen my childhood?'"

"Yes. It goes…", and he liltingly recited "Before you judge me, try to…", and then sang the rest.

"Didn't I hear that playing on your merry-go-round at Neverland?"

Delightedly, he said, "Yes! Yes!"

He went on about childhood, how, like Elizabeth, as a child star he used to support his family.

"I was a child supporting my family. My father took the money. Some of the money was put aside for me, but a lot of the money was put back into the entire family. I was just working the whole time."

"So you didn't have a childhood, then – you lost it. If you had it to do again how would you change things?"

"Even though I missed out on a lot, I wouldn't change anything."

"I can hear your little kids in the background." The gurgling had become insistent, like a plug-hole in a flood. "If they wanted to be performers and lead the life you led, what would you say?"

"They can do whatever they want to do. If they want to do that, it's okay."

"How will you raise them differently from the way you were raised?"

"With more fun. More love. Not so isolated."

"Elizabeth says she finds it painful to look back on her life. Do you find it hard to do that?"

"No, not when it's pertaining to an overview of your life rather than any particular moment."

This oblique and somewhat bookish form of expression was a surprise to me – another Michael Jackson surprise. He had made me pause with "intoxicated" and "zenith of the universe", too. I said: "I'm not too sure what you mean by 'overview'."

"Like childhood. I can look at that. The arc of my childhood."

"But there's some moment in childhood when you feel particularly vulnerable. Did you feel that? Elizabeth said that she felt she was owned by the studio."

"Sometimes really late at night we'd have to go out – it might be three in the morning – to do a show. My father forced us. He would get us up. I was seven or eight. Some of these were clubs or private parties at people's houses. We'd have to perform." This was in Chicago, New York, Indiana, Philadelphia, he added – all over the country. "I'd be sleeping and I'd hear my father. 'Get up! There's a show!' "

"But when you were on stage, didn't you get a kind of thrill?"

"Yes. I loved being on stage. I loved doing the shows."

"What about the other side of the business – if someone came up after the show, did you feel awkward?"

"I didn't like it. I've never liked people-contact. Even to this day, after a show, I hate it, meeting people. It makes me shy. I don't know what to say."

"But you did that Oprah interview, right?

"With Oprah it was tough. Because it was on TV – on TV, it's out of my realm. I know that everyone is looking and judging. It's so hard."

"Is this a recent feeling – that you're under scrutiny?"

"No," he said firmly, "I have always felt that way."

"Even when you were seven or eight?"

"I'm not happy doing it."

"Which I suppose is why talking to Elizabeth over a period of two or three months on the phone would be the perfect way to get acquainted. Or doing what we're doing right now."

"Yes."

At some point Michael's use of the phrase "lost childhood" prompted me to quote the line from George William Russell, "In the lost boyhood of Judas / Christ was betrayed", and I heard "Wow" at the other end of the line. He asked me to explain what that meant, and when I did, he urged me to elaborate. What sort of a childhood did Judas have? What had happened to him? Where had he lived? Who had he known?

I told him that Judas had red hair, that he was the treasurer of the Apostles, that he might have been Sicarii – a member of a radical Jewish group, that he might not have died by hanging himself but somehow exploded, all his guts flying.

Twenty more minutes of Biblical apocrypha with Michael Jackson, on the lost childhood of Judas, and then the whisper again.

"Wow."