AN HONEST BROKER?: The problem of the United States mediating the war in the Holy Land is how to convince everybody outside of Israel that it is an honest broker, that it is not on the side of the Jewish state propped by $3 billion in mostly military US aid each year.

Based alone on the terms being used by the Western press in its reportage and commentaries, which are heavy with Washington officialese, the propaganda balance is subliminally tilted against Palestine.

The suicide bombings by Palestininan diehards resulting in the killing of civilians are invariably referred to as terror attacks – and thereby lumped under the broad category of terrorism against which the US has launched a global holy crusade.

But the offensive by Israeli forces, including those that have also killed civilians, are not referred to as terror attacks — thus elevating them above the collective crimes that the US has been denouncing since the Sept. 11 terror attack on the heart of America.

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SMOLDERING GRIEVANCE: We are now being treated to the spectacle of the US telling Palestine to stop its “terror” attacks, while simply asking Israel to temper its responses. In the words of US Secretary of State Colin Powell, “Israeli forces must exercise their utmost restraint and discipline and refrain from excessive use of force.”

It seems that terrorism, by American definition, is what your tormentor does to you and not what you do to him.

At this point, the world should ponder why some Palestinians — like Vietnamese monks immolating themselves before the US escalated the Indochinese war in the 60s — would be motivated enough to blow themselves up as sacrificial human bombs.

Until the deep root of their grievance is wrenched out, the suicide attacks, called terrorism in Washington, will continue to claim more innocent victims.

In the same vein, it is not enough that the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attack on Manhattan and the Pentagon are hunted down. The smoldering grievance that impelled the human bombs must be addressed, too.

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CHA-CHA A MERE EXCUSE: When a trapo (short for “traditional politician,” but literally means “rag”) hankers for again rewriting the 15-year-old Constitution, our guess is that he is just foisting on us an excuse for his dismal performance in public office or is looking for a way to stay on.

Amending the Constitution is an escapist ruse. It is an indirect attempt to explain that a politician or some official has failed on the job because of the system.

His unsaid line goes: “The system is bad (which is why I failed), so let’s change it.”  The other line is: “My time has run out under the present system, so let’s start a new system.”

The bare truth is that whatever newfangled system we adopt, however we keep amending the Constitution, if we do not amend or reform ourselves — individually as citizens and collectively as a nation — we will continue to be a hopeless case.

Beware of cha-cha (charter change) or whatever new name the trapos’ indirect excuse for failure may take. Look at the proponents of constitutional amendment and you will note one common denominator — they are all trapos looking for a way to stay in power.

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INSATIABLE PARASITES: We agree that the Constitution is in bad need of tight editing. But instead of blaming the charter, their own creation in the first place, our politicians should give it a chance to prove itself despite its shortcomings.

From the day the Cory Constitution was ratified in February 1987, trapos have never ceased to discredit it and to make sure it does not get in their way.

Sample: For the past 15 years, trapos have seen to it that the constitutional mandate for the outlawing of political dynasties is never carried out. The perpetuation of discredited dynasties and the treating of public office as a family business have been some of the reasons why this country has been going backwards instead of forward.

Our country is being eaten from within by these political parasites. Now that the nation is virtually sapped of its vitality, the same insatiable worms want to move to another host by creating a new system.

Nakasusuka! Why are we tolerating this wanton betrayal of the public trust?

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MEMORY MYSTERY: Memory in modern computers involves orderly storage and extremely fast retrieval. Data are stored at random, or in a defined order, and because the chips make extremely fast retrieval possible, it would seem that recall is instant.

Memory in computers is actually split-second processing and retrieval. How is it with the human mind? How does the brain remember? How do we improve memory, if we can?

Reuter reports from Italy that 24-year-old Gianni Golfera from the northern city of Ravenna has been performing feats of memory that leave scientists and laymen alike wondering how he does it.

At 12, Golfera’s memory feats included translating Giordano Bruno’s 1582 Latin treatise on the art of memory. He proceeded to develop his own technique for remembering and spewing out massive data.

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GIFTED THREE GENERATIONS: It seems to run in the family. His grandfather remembers entire volumes of classical texts and his father, a pilot, has memorized the maps so he no longer finds any need for them when flying. His father and grandfather can recall massive information with ease.

With his gift of memory, Golfera no longer carries a diary or looks up names, addresses and phone numbers.

He said he could remember the names of 100 people just introduced to him and recite word for word a two-hour speech. “If you give me a numbered list of 1,000 words,” he said, “I can list the words in order or tell you where they are placed.”

His method involves linking numbers or words to familiar mental place or pre-arranged folders in his mind.

Each concept is translated into a picture or image and the ideas are inserted into pre-memorized places. “It’s like a system of rooms which hold the information,” he explained.

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UNLOCKING DNA CODE: Neurobiologist Antonio Malgaroli, based at the San Raffaele hospital in Milan, uses Golfera as an example of the potential power of the mind. He said he hopes a study of minds like Golfera’s will bring science closer to understanding memory.

“We would need to identify the genes for memory, the key proteins involved,” he said. “We are still a long way off, but I hope we might get there in the next couple of decades.”

Malgaroli and his research team hope to identify the individual genes that code for memory. The DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that makes up genes writes the combination or formula for the proteins that make everything from muscle tissue to hair.

Scientific research has concentrated on genes linked with the decline of memory through diseases like Alzheimer’s. “If we could gather together a hundred people with the same memory capacity as Golfera and study their genetic pattern we could see if there was some kind of clustering,” he said.