The violent Nicanor Reyes clash was just what they wanted

PARIS, France – The mini-battle on Nicanor Reyes street in Sampaloc, just off FEU, is just what the militant demonstrators wanted: an opportunity to show on live television and in photographs that La Emperadora’s police were bashing heads and using "storm troopers" tactics.

It didn’t matter, naturally, that as many cops were injured as "rioters". The anti-GMA marchers got the TV footage and international publicity they needed to project themselves as "martyrs" in the freedom fight.

It’s inevitable that if any group tries to march on Malacañang, the PNP and in time even the Presidential Security Group (PSG) will be resorting to more force than prescribed in CPR. They don’t want a repeat of the May 1, 2001, assault on the Palace by screaming mobs which almost boiled over the gates. This time the demonstrators, while militant and aggressive are far fewer than the old EDSA TRES sana days when the fledging GMA almost got overwhelmed by the pro-Erap masa, but though their ranks are sparse, they’ve learned to make maximum noise.

Here in Europe, though, nobody cares. They’re more concerned about the threat of la grippe aviare (as the bird flu is called here in France as well as in Spain.)

Indeed the virus has jumped to the Greek islands – and Taiwan, too. All of a sudden the magic medicine – hopefully – is that pill manufactured by the Swiss company, ROCHE, namely Tamiflu which is being announced on local television as well as CNN and BBC here as the "antidote" to the deadly flu.

In fact, Spain’s head of Public Health, when I left Madrid a few days ago, was already stammering on radio and TV why Spain was caught flat-footed by not having Tamiflu, then belatedly ordering two million doses. Don Manuel Onorbe admitted that France and the United Kingdom (Britain) have bought over 15 million doses of Tamiflu, enough to treat 25 percent of their populations. Alas, when Onorbe contacted ROCHE, the Swiss laboratory could offer only two million doses, to be delivered next year in 2006!

Pobre España if the grippe aviar strikes there! This would, even if not a pandemic, surely put a crimp on Flamenco dancing, the toros, the brave bulls, would get the better of the flu-weakened toreros in the Corrida, tossing them about and tearing to shreds their trajes de luces. La Virgen de Macarena protect us in this hour of (Tamiflu) need!

The truth is that I’ve been taking Tamiflu for the past four years everytime a cold worsened, my throat got sore, or I feared the oncoming of trankaso or influenza. I never went on a trip without a box, and it "cured" me once while I was attending an International Press Institute (IPI) conference in damp, fog-shrouded Vienna. One in the morning, one in the evening, my doctor Dr. Ruth Divinagracia had taught me – but take the full "course" of ten capsules even when feeling okay already. Never failed.

In the Philippines, however, we had an advantage. Tamiflu was being sold over the counter, like aspirin, while in other countries, like Europe and the US, it could be dispensed only through a doctor’s prescription. In short, the Tamiflu might "save" you, but the doctor’s fee would kill you.

Today, I learned in a phone call to Manila, every box of Tamiflu has been snapped up in our drugstores, the result of panic-buying owing to CNN-BBC publicity. In Europe, it’s even worse. Nobody can get Tamiflu, except from the government’s newly-hoarded monopoly.

Website quacks have taken advantage of the panic and are offering on the internet an array of odd and invariably useless products to "substitute" for the unavailable Tamiflu. The offerings by the opportunists include masks, air filtration systems, rubber gloves and sterilizing hand washes. Also on offer are "herbal teas" and even, it’s been reported, a DIY "house for bats" as a defense against the threatened pandemic. As an international auction house explains in its advertisements, the "bat house" will "attract mosquito-eating bats to eat the parasites that may be carrying the disease"!

Another "product" being touted is a diet and anti-acne pill named Alpha Vexin, which its sellers crow will not merely cure your acne (pimples) and avian flu, but an assortment of other ailments known to mankind. There are even anti-bird flu "teabags from Peru", and Dead Sea salts from Israel and Jordan being promoted. According to England’s Daily Telegraph, teas containing star anise, the Chinese spice that provides the essential element of the drug Tamiflu, is gaining popularity. The US Food and Drug Administration has been compelled to warn that some drinkers of this exotic tea could suffer neurological effects, such as seizures, vomiting, jitteriness and rapid eye movement. (Careful, the girls might think you’re winking lasciviously at them). As for me, I’m sticking to Hangzhou green tea from West Lake, "first picking," or at least Early Grey.

Yes, and I’ve got my mandatory box of Tamiflu anyway in my travelling bag. To think that when this writer left Manila, I never dreamed the birds were coming.

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Talk about the American cultural "invasion" which alarmed the last UNESCO general assembly meeting here in Paris!

Everywhere I go, there are pumpkins on the table, and many bistrots, restaurants and cafés, have flying witch-figures and all the Halloween trimmings from false cobwebs and witches’ broomsticks to sorcerer costumes.

Le Journal de Dimanche ran a piece entitled "Halloween change de couleur", while Disneyland resort Paris (Euro-Disney) is announcing Soireés Halloween on October 30 and 31.

We drove an hour and a half out of Paris the other day to visit the famous Musée de la Figurine Historique in Compiègne, with its collection of 100,000 figurines (like the soldats de plomb, lead soldiers, I collect), arranged in dioramas in full battle array.

In the museum, you could see the Battle of Waterloo diorama, "created" by Charles Laurent between 1905 and 1923, a lifetime labor of love; or the Three Musketeers on their steeds pursued by the evil Cardinal’s Red Guards; the golden Catafalqie of the great Napoleon, escorted by veterans of his Grand Armee, drawn by 16 prancing horses decked out in gold brocade, bearing his ashes from his isle of exile St. Helena, to the just completed Arch de Triomph, now he Champs Elysee’s landmark. The Arch was not completed until 1836, so the funeral procession was held on 15 December 1840. The burial cortege halted briefly at the Arc so the Emperor’s ashes could be honored with a 21-gun salute.

On display, too, figures on graceful horseback in a diorama inspired by the tapestry, Les Chasses de Louis XV, as well as a tableau of the capture of Joan of Arc on 23 May 1430 – right in Compiegne town itself. No wonder, in the square outside is a heroic statue of La Pucelle, the Maid of Orleans, sword upraised, her banner studded with fleurs de lis on a field of blue fluttering against the blue sky.

On the pretty facade of the medieval church outside is the embedded statue of Philip Lo Bel (Philipe the Handsome) whose marriage to Queen Juana la Loca (Joanna the Mad) produced the kings of Spain, including Felipe Segundo after whom the Philippines was named by Magellan. Why was Juana dubbed "the mad"? Because she so adored Philipe (Felipe) that when he died, she would carry his embalmed body, morbidly in a coffin, along with her in her travels. Too much of love beyond the grave is just too much.

Is Compiegne in Le Valois just a Ville Imperial, then, where the palace was once occupied by Napoleon I’s Empress Eugenie in winter, charming in its winding, cobbled streets and its medieval ambiance? The modern world has intruded: in bars and cafes, there too is Halloween, worshipped with the usual spray-on cobwebs, glowing pumpkin eyes, black hatted witch figures cackling over a brew (of beer, of course). How did this American pastime get transplanted to anti-American France? Obviously, it’s here to stay. Soon they’ll be calling it an old French tradition.

Discomfited, we sped off in Ambassador Hector Villarroel’s Chedeng to nearby Senlis, with its finely-fretted Gothic cathedral – and discovered the Halloween pumpkins and cobwebs there, too! Quelle dommage! Even la langue des Anglais has insolently taken root – everyday "French" words currently in use are le weekend, le job, le show business, le supermodel, le upgrade and le coming-out. As the local doctor tells a would-be patient: Vous voulez un checkup!"

Need we translate?

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When all is said and done, the French will always be French – and anti-American (while enjoying Hollywood movies and US TV series, and gobbling down Big Macs – whatever happened to haute cuisine or Paul Bocuse’s failed nouvelle cuisine down in Lyons, small portions of food, but big bills?). Obesity, hamburger-style is beginning to plague the French who used to pride themselves on being slim, despite their juicy Quick Burgers, or those tasty tidbits from Fauchon.

Oh well. For better or for worse, mostly worse, the trans-Atlantic Love-Hate relationship festers.

One of the gallant Frenchmen who joined General George Washington in America’s fight for liberty was the Marquis de Lafayette – dare I say the Galeries Lafayette super-department store was named after him, or from the boulevard that bears his name? In any event, the Americans returned the favor by sending hundreds of thousands of men to defend France and roll back the Germans in World War I. The charming legend is that when the leader of the American Expeditionary Forces, General John J. "Blackjack" Pershing of Mindanao, arrived with his troopship, he went straight to the French Marquis’ grave to lay a wreath before sending his soldiers to help in the succor of France. Pershing said: "Lafayette, we are here!"

Will the age-old enmity between the French and Americans persist? Remember, the grand Statue of Liberty which holds aloft her golden torch to the "tired and poor" in New York Harbor, was donated by the French people to the fledgling USA.

Two years ago, on the morning before the State Dinner in the White House, we had breakfast at the nearby guest house for visiting VIPs and heads of state, the Blair House. At the entrance to Blair, I spotted the portrait of a general, valiant in his uniform, hung in pride of place. Surprised, I accosted the Marine Guard in his dress blues assigned on the front steps.

"Who’s that?"

"Why, sir," he grinned back, "That’s Lafayette!"

Forever entwined, cursed by history to be together – swirled about by the tides of destiny – the Americans and the annoying French. It is a relationship of pain and pride that goes far beyond the hostility between Dubya Bush and Jacques Chirac.