The head of an association that helps victims of sects, Catherine Picard, called the verdict "intelligent."

"Scientology can no longer hide behind freedom of conscience," she said.

The Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology, founded in 1954 by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, has been active for decades in Europe, but has struggled to gain status as a religion. It is considered a sect in France and has faced prosecution and difficulties in registering its activities in many countries.

Defense lawyer Patrick Maisonneuve said during the trial that neither the Church of Scientology nor the six leaders on trial had gained financially from the group's practices.

The original complaint in the case dates back more than a decade, when a young woman said she took out loans and spent the equivalent of euro21,000 on books, courses and "purification packages" after being recruited in 1998. When she sought reimbursement and to leave the group, its leadership refused. She was among three eventual plaintiffs.

Olivier Morice, lawyer for civil parties in the case, said the verdict was "historic" because it was the first time in France that the Church of Scientology has been convicted of organized fraud.

Investigating judge Jean-Christophe Hullin spent years examining the group's activities, and in his indictment criticized what he called the Scientologists' "obsession" with financial gain and practices he said were aimed at plunging members into a "state of subjection."

The Church of Scientology teaches that technology can expand the mind and help solve problems. It claims 10 million members around the world, including celebrity devotees Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

Belgium, Germany and other European countries have been criticized by the U.S. State Department for labeling Scientology as a cult or sect and enacting laws to restrict its operations.

Either that, or somebody needs to give me a contract to write "Canadian Women Don't Do All That Shit You Hate About American Women" because I, too, lived 10 years of my adult life in another country -- and even have dual citizenship to bolster my not-really-American cred -- so I'm certainly as qualified to take pot shots at my fellow countrywomen by essentializing my other countrywomen as Ollivier is. (Or as qualified as "French Women Don't Get Fat" author Mireille Guiliano -- a bona fide Frenchwoman with an American husband and a part-time home in New York -- is to do the reverse.) Canadian women: They're polite! They dress for the weather! They can wrestle a moose better than any American not named Palin! They're sort of British, which means they don't get their girly emotions all over everything, and they're sort of French, which means they eat, drink, socialize and brush their teeth in secret, sophisticated French ways! Come on -- you know this has bestseller potential.

According to Ollivier, Frenchwomen "are self-possessed; even slightly defiant" and "think in degrees of passion and possibility." They also "generally prefer men to be in the picture, not out of it," are averse to restrictive rules, "simultaneously romantic and realistic," "more interested in having a life than making a living," and "matter-of-fact about the body." When it comes to beauty, "au naturel is de rigueur, and less is truly more" (I had no idea L'Oréal, Lancôme, etc., were relying entirely on the déclassé American market!), and French femmes "enjoy being grown-ups." Wow, those sound like some terrific women! And also like a lot of American women. And Canadian women. And, you know, human women. Apart from a couple of phrases commonly used in English anyway, I'm not seeing anything intrinsically French on that list, and I'll bet you a buck -- or a euro, if you prefer -- that there are even loads of genuine Frenchwomen who don't identify with Ollivier's broad (ha!) outlines of their peculiar femininity.

Of course it can be fascinating, educational and humbling to explore the real differences between cultures -- hence the discipline of anthropology and the enduring appeal of travel (not to mention narratives about it). But this trend of using mostly flattering stereotypes about Frenchwomen to underscore mostly damaging stereotypes about American women is nothing but a shallow international catfight staged for readers looking to have their own biases confirmed, not challenged. Which raises a sincere question about what's wrong with American women: Why are so many of them buying this merde?

"Julie & Julia," directed by Nora Ephron, is only partly a movie about Julia Child. Ephron adapted the script from two sources: Child's posthumously published 2006 memoir (co-written with Alex Prud'homme) "My Life in France" and Julie Powell's entertaining, soufflé-light memoir -- from which the movie gets its name -- a recounting of the year Powell spent cooking every recipe in Child's 1961 classic "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." (Powell's book got its start as a blog hosted by Salon.) In "Julie & Julia," Powell (played by an exhaustingly perky Amy Adams) toils by day as a low-level government employee but, in her evenings at home in Queens, N.Y., gives her life meaning by wrestling with the challenges of boning duck carcasses, murdering lobsters and making perfect aspic (a food that, perfect or not, practically no one wants to eat anymore). In between recipes, she squabbles and cuddles with her long-suffering husband, Eric (Chris Messina), commiserates about her life troubles with her surly friend Sarah (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and sits down at the computer to blog about it. Through it all, we wait for the payoff, and eventually get it: She jumps up and down when, after her blog takes off and gets media exposure, she starts getting offers from agents and book publishers.

Contrast that with the other subject of "Julie & Julia": A strapping, cheerful 6-foot-plus California girl (and former OSS secretary) who, in the late 1940s, moves to Paris with her shorter, much beloved husband and immediately falls in love with her new country and its food, embarking on an adventure that will ultimately change the way Americans think about food, as well as provide a genius flash of inspiration for Dan Aykroyd. Which story sounds more interesting to you? (Or, as Julia would put it, "To yooooooooooou?")

The miracle here is that Ephron, a filmmaker who in the past has shown a gift for making clumsy, resolutely un-subtle pictures like "Bewitched" (and who, worse yet, gave us both "You've Got Mail" and "Sleepless in Seattle," two monster hits of the '90s that helped hasten the downhill slide of contemporary romantic comedies), has managed to fashion these two inequitable stories into a breezy entertainment. "Julie & Julia" is wobbly: I found myself groaning a little whenever the action would shift to present-day Queens and perking up considerably when Ephron would once again return to the boisterous adventures of that great, tall gal in France. In places, Alexandre Desplat's score makes Ephron's job harder than it needs to be: Desplat has written some beautiful scores (most notably that for "The Painted Veil"), but here, as Julie does things like reminisce about her mother's version of Julia's boeuf bourguignon, he resorts to twinkly piano stuff that hangs in the air with the heaviness of Glade.

Cut to France -- please. And thankfully, Ephron shows a surprising degree of grace at navigating us through the movie's shifts between eras and places. If nothing else, the movie's clockwork rhythms give us something to look forward to: When Adams' excessive chirpiness and slight whininess start getting to us, we know there's always Julia, waiting for us in France. When we first meet her, she's arriving in Paris with Paul, to whom she's been married just a few years, fluttering and cooing and mangling Français with so much joy and enthusiasm that it's clear she's found her spiritual home. Julia, like her Queens counterpart Julie, has reached a point in her life where she needs to find something "to do." First she tries hat making, and we get a glimpse of a giantess comically fumbling with delicate scraps of tulle. But eventually, she recognizes that the one thing she really likes to do is eat. "I'm growing in front of you!" she trills at Paul during one of their dinnertime conversations, which leads her to try cooking school. She enrolls at the École le Cordon Bleu, where she learns that she can't properly cut an onion. She must also stare down the school's vinegary, imperious owner, Madame Bressart (Joan Juliet Buck).

But it's not long before Julia gets the hang of cutting those onions, and her French gets better too: Or at least, as Paul puts it, because she's the kind of person who could "bring out the best in a polecat," she decides the French are the most wonderful people in the world, and they grudgingly return the compliment. Streep's performance finds its effortless counterpart in Tucci's. As Paul, he's an appreciative foil -- he manages to be a strong, definable presence even as he yields most of the spotlight to her. Streep's performance may be potent, but it doesn't overwhelm those of her fellow actors: At one point Jane Lynch shows up as Julia's equally outsize sister, Dorothy, and the two tumble into each other's arms at the train station like two wandering goonybirds who have found each other at last.

Ephron does the smart thing in "Julie & Julia" and lets Streep carry the day, with a minimum of embellishment. Streep is too often praised for her ability to master an accent, which is evidence of her discipline. But a good performance has to offer more than just proof of how much work you've put into it, and Streep is always at her best when she makes it all look easy, instead of advertising how difficult it is. Her exacting, actressy turn in last year's "Doubt" is an example of the worst kind of Streep performance. What she does here, in its lightness and outright glee, is the best kind.

Streep uses her gift for mimicry to make the link between Julia as pop-culture presence and human being. Just listening to Streep is pure joy: She gets the way Julia's voice resembled the unself-conscious chortling of an extremely happy bird. And Ephron and Streep both trust their instincts in one of the movie's best scenes: Julia's inability to have children is handled in one brief, essentially wordless moment between her and her husband. That moment, like much of the movie around it, is about the business of getting on with life, and of cooking as one of the most pleasurable ways to sustain it. That's as true in Queens as it is in Paris, which was Julia Child's point all along.

Berlusconi now spoke to him directly: "I would like to extend my congratulations to Barack Obama," he said, adding that the economic crisis had begun in the U.S. "Now he has to address it," he said and looked towards Obama. "We wish him all the best for the citizens of the U.S. and the entire world."

Then everyone turned to the American president. The 18 men and two women were sitting in the drab ExCel Conference Centre, where red bouquets that resembled flower boxes had been placed on the tables. The world's top politicians were waiting for a closing statement.

"It is gratifying to see that good work has been done here," Obama began. "Ten, 20, 30 years ago, it was not a matter of course that countries which were traditionally enemies solved problems together. After the Great Depression, a similar group did not convene until 1944. Also in 1982, following the Mexico Crisis, it took seven years before the problems were tackled together." Now he spoke with urgency: "It is important that we do not sell short the results of this summit. The press would like us to have conflicts. Instead we have attained great achievements. And it is important that we exude confidence."

He then lowered his voice: "It is true, as my Italian friend has said, that the crisis began in the U.S. I take responsibility, even if I wasn't even president at the time." And he underscored how important it is for him "that we now genuinely make progress. Thank you." Applause.

The others couldn't believe their ears. Was that really a confession of guilt from the U.S.? Was it a translation error, or at least an inaccuracy? Afterward, this sentence fueled long discussions among the members of the German delegation. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was so impressed by Obama's statement that she rushed to tell her finance minister, Peer Steinbrück. Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso reacted immediately: The proposal to hold the next summit not in Japan, but rather in the U.S., is something that he no longer rejects, he says, "now that the U.S. has shouldered responsibility."

Obama's confession may go down in world history as one of the greatest statements ever made. The U.S. president is accepting responsibility for the beginning of one of the worst economic crises of the last century. By doing so, he has admitted that one of the excesses of the American way of life -- the insatiable craving for huge profits -- has brought the world to the brink of disaster. The others may have played their part, but the origins lie in the U.S. The fact that Obama has now admitted this sends a strong signal of hope to the world, perhaps the strongest to emerge from the G-20 summit in London last Wednesday and Thursday. Such an admission could begin to pave the way toward rectifying the situation.

A number of resolutions were also made in London: Pledges to introduce greater regulation of financial markets, ban tax havens and grant loans for poorer countries. It still won't be enough to save the world yet. The summit will not help liberate the world's banks from the burden of billions of dollars' worth of toxic derivatives. It won't trigger an economic upswing, and the expectation that it can successfully rein in global financial markets is little more than wishful thinking.

But the conference does signal an important departure from Anglo-Saxon-style turbo capitalism, with its unregulated credit markets, promises of double-digit returns and astronomical bonus payments for managers. It could mark the beginning of more moderate business practices, under the watchful eye of countries with more regulatory muscle.

In the hours immediately preceding the conference, it didn't look as if the representatives of the world's leading economic powers would be able to achieve such a result. The host, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, didn't think much of firm controls of financial markets, and preferred to boost the economy with new stimulus packages. Obama appeared to share his views.

Over the previous week, though, a united front had gradually emerged on continental Europe. This alliance had existed earlier, but had started to crumble. Germany and France seemed to have drifted apart under Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But after a flurry of phone calls and a number of meetings, they found a joint position on the financial crisis: regulation of the financial markets and no new stimulus packages. It looked like the stage was set for a battle between the continental Europeans and the Anglo-Saxons.

Shortly after Merkel and Sarkozy landed in England on Wednesday, they held a joint press conference. The German chancellor said she was "slightly concerned" that participants at the conference might too easily opt to sweep things under the rug and "not seize the evil by the roots."

Sarkozy then said that he and Merkel spoke with one voice. He said that he would not leave here "without new regulations." The French president said that one was either in favor of putting an end to how things had been done or continuing as before. He said that nobody had to lecture Europe on how to forge compromises, but a compromise had to be shared by all the regions of the world, especially since the crisis had clearly not erupted in Europe, "n'est-ce pas?"

All of this sounded fairly confrontational, despite the frequent use of the word "compromise."

When the world's most powerful leaders met on Thursday afternoon at the ExCel Conference Centre for the plenary session that concluded the summit, it looked like a deadlock situation. In the middle of the previous night, the preparations of the sherpas -- as the negotiators are called -- for the final communiqué had come to a standstill. At some point in time, the aides had thrown their hands up in despair. It seemed to them that the differences between the Anglo-Saxon and German-French worlds were simply too great.

As a result, their bosses found no polished texts on the table, only a draft with many gaps and question marks. At an international summit, this counts as a worst-case scenario.

Fighting over each word

Now the full-scale wrangling began. They argued over sentences, phrases and individual words, but in the end these words would be decisive, would dictate a transformation or a continuation of business as usual. Victory or defeat. Triumph or humiliation.

The world was expecting from the heads of state and government an answer to the question of what will happen now that global capitalism has crashed. But there were other expectations as well -- national expectations. Everyone here at the table had a reputation to lose on their home turf. In the run-up to this event, they had all told their constituents what they intended to push through here at this table. They knew that people back home were watching carefully to see how they would perform.

Shortly before noon, Merkel had finished pleading her case for regulation of the financial markets. Her red jacket radiated among all the dark suits like a buoy in the sea.

Now it was a question of what positions the other countries would take -- a question of determining the top issues at the summit. Obama and Brown had repeatedly said that regulation and tax havens were of secondary importance. Merkel and Sarkozy wanted to give them priority. The previous evening, Merkel's advisors had estimated that she had a 50-50 chance of pushing through her agenda.

So it was important now to hear from the Chinese leader, the representative of the superpower of the future. Hu Jintao began by saying that he wanted to make some remarks concerning strengthening financial oversight. He said it was "very appropriate to strengthen financial regulation." There must be external supervision, no self-regulation. He added that an impenetrable barrier should be put up between the conventional banking world and investment banks. "Shadow banks" and hedge funds should be abolished. And he called for an early warning system. Those were clear words. The German chancellor nodded with satisfaction. China had come through.

But this was followed by a bitter setback for the supporters of regulation. Japan's Prime Minister Aso said that it would be better "not to rush forward with regulations and supervisory plans." Japan had countered China, as has often been the case in history. The contest remained undecided.

At 12:10 p.m., Brown gave "Nicolas" the floor. Sarkozy at first adopted a decidedly polite tone. "The communiqué is truly outstanding," said the French president. "We have, and you have, Gordon, done outstanding work. But there remains a problem that we have to face up to. Is there a list of tax havens: yes or no?"

Over the next few hours, the dispute over the list became a symbol for just how serious the world's most powerful leaders are about creating a world with new, fair rules. It served as a measure of their willingness to initiate reforms.

This list already exists. At least, the OECD has all the data required to publish it at short notice. But until now it has met with political resistance. The list names those countries that get rich at the expense of other countries by doing business with dirty money from tax evaders. Now the question is whether -- with the approval of the G-20 -- the list should be made public as a modern form of putting someone in the stocks.

Sarkozy needed this list. He had promised the French that he would get it in London, that it was non-negotiable, and that he would leave if his demand wasn't met.

Of course he was fighting for more -- for a new economic model, for more regulation and restrictions. This also included a new, more stringent system of bank supervision, a watertight monitoring of all financial products -- but also the fight against tax havens.

Brown had not mentioned the list in his draft version of the communiqué. "We all know that there are tax havens," the Frenchman informed his British counterpart. And he said that every one of them threatened the global financial system.

Sarkozy worked himself into a fury. Two-thirds of all financial risks, he said, lie dormant in the tax havens -- some $1.8 trillion is hidden in the Cayman Islands alone. "These are the countries where there is crime and speculation." Nobody at this table abides speculation, he said. Why then "shouldn't we publish the list today? The list exists, of course. That would be an honest approach."

Then the Netherlands joined sides with those who favor regulation. "I totally agree with what Angela Merkel has said and I would like to support her," said Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

This was followed by yet another setback for Merkel and Sarkozy, a blow that came from their own ranks. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, addressed the conference. He spoke at length against issuing a list. Many countries had announced "that they would now respect the rules," so such an instrument was no longer required, he said. The German delegation suspects that Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker was behind this intervention. After all, his country has a rather murky reputation when it comes to tax matters.

Then Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made a small but nasty comment. He presented concrete proposals for who exactly should stand on the list of evil, tax-dodging countries. "I think that Costa Rica, Guatemala, Malaysia, the Philippines and Uruguay should also be condemned," he said.

Suddenly, the conference resembled a world court. Countries whose names were quite openly mentioned sat in the dock. Prosecutors presented arguments, and lawyers rushed to the defense. And Gordon Brown presided over this world court like a judge.

With a sonorous voice, he tried to keep a tight rein on the debate. At 12:15 p.m., Brown adjourned the first part of the plenary session and invited everyone to eat lunch. The heads of state and government sat at four long tables that were arranged in a square. Now the constellations were smaller and more intimate than in the larger format of the plenary session -- now those whose opinion really makes a difference found themselves sitting together over liver paté and vegetable strudel.

At the lunch table, World Bank President Robert Zoellick was asked to give an overview of the crisis. "If I say too much, then tell me and I'll stop," said the American, and then he began his dramatic analysis.

"For the first time since 1945, the global economy has shrunk. We expect it to contract by 1.5 percent," he said. "Infant mortality will also rise. That's 200,000 babies who will have to die. The situation in developing countries is particularly dire. Today, there have already been massive job losses in Botswana and Sri Lanka. Even growth in China is critical."

Zoellick noted that the situation continues to be uncertain and that "2009 will be a dangerous year."

"I can't sign this"

Alarmed by Zoellick's comments, the G-20 leaders once again turned their attention to the wording of the final communiqué. Chinese President Hu expressed concern that they might be promising too much. The draft text contained the assertion that the projected $5 trillion in stimulus programs would lead to the creation of 19 million jobs.

"That seems to me to be too optimistic," Hu said. "Could it be the case that these figures were arrived at simply by assuming a certain ratio of job creation to investment volume?"

Hu's question went unanswered. Merkel had a question of her own about another figure. "The 4 percent by which economic output is supposed to rise, is that 4 percent of global GDP or 4 percent of growth? We should specify exactly what is meant or we could end up saying something that turns out to be baloney," she said. Her choice of words was a reminder that world leaders are no less given to plain talking than ordinary citizens in their respective countries.

Brown, who in his function as summit chairman was responsible for formulating the draft text, tried to attribute blame for the lack of clarity to the sources in question, saying the 4 percent was a growth forecast and that the reference to 19 million jobs had come from the International Monetary Fund and wasn't a calculation his people had made.

"In that case, it has no business being in your text," someone called out.

"We do occasionally rely on information from other organizations," Brown replied somewhat defensively.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also had doubts about the promise of 19 million new jobs. "If I go home with this figure, people are going to be asking me: 'How many of these jobs have you created in India?' And they will want to hold me accountable for the fact that the number of new jobs available in India is continuing to decline."

This was followed by further comments on the 19 million job figure by the Australian prime minister, the Russian president and the head of the IMF. In a display of Asian wisdom, South Korean President Lee Myung Bak attempted to defuse the debate by saying: "If the economy has become so unpredictable, then economic statistics are likely to be less reliable as well." He suggested they write 19 million "according to the IMF." "No forecasts are correct anyway. Economics isn't like mathematics. One and one isn't always two. In economics it can sometimes be three or four. One and one can also turn out to be one."

This kind of talk was starting to make some of those listening to it feel a little dizzy. The exchanges between world leaders were redolent of the kinds of meetings that are held in thousands of companies around the world every day where, as here, people are prone to get hung up on minor details all too easily.

Now, it seemed, only the authority of a superpower would be able to end the debate that continued to rage in reference to the 19 million jobs. Before the meeting Barack Obama had said that he was there to listen, not to lecture. He had kept his word up to that point, but apparently felt things were getting out of hand: "I think we shouldn't waste too much time on this. If we want to use this number we should add 'according to economic models' or name the source."

Perhaps one should hold off for a while yet on writing the U.S. off as a superpower.

At 2:27 p.m. Gordon Brown announced: "The final version is here." By that he meant the version of the communiqué in which all the desired changes had been made, at least those that had been discussed up to that point. The delegations then withdrew to consult further before beginning the final round.

Brown opened the meeting by saying that with a little bit of goodwill they could get the job done fairly quickly and asked everyone to be fair and not to make any major changes to the text.

He then started going through the text of the communiqué, reviewing each paragraph where changes had been made.

Brown was just about to call out paragraph 26 when he was interrupted by Argentinean President Cristina Kirchner. "I need to say something here." She wanted to talk about attempts to grant poorer countries more IMF support through the sale of gold reserves.

Kirchner was upset by last-minute changes that had been made in the text. "The delegations worked on this text for four months and then five minutes ago we get an entirely different text. Making changes in this manner, without discussing things beforehand, isn't very businesslike. I can't sign this unless a formal reservation is written into the text."

Brown was apologetic: "If I had known there was going to be a change in meaning, I would have let the old formulation stand."

That was the starting bell for a renewed round of haggling. One after the other, the leaders of the world's 20 most powerful countries presented their pet interests in an attempt to gain a further advantage of some kind for their countries. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was at the head of the line. As is so often the case, his motivation was pure vanity. "In paragraph 24 we have not taken advantage of the opportunity to mention the summit being held in July on La Maddalena," he complained. Berlusconi was referring to the G-8 summit, which his country will be hosting this summer.

Another person at the table, also known for his vanity, felt he had waited long enough. There was still no reference in the communiqué to Nicolas Sarkozy's list of tax havens and he took this as an affront. "What's with the tax havens?" he asked with an element of irritation in his voice. "I won't be able to agree to this thing if there's no list. I won't be able to sign it. I won't assume political responsibility for it. If there's no list these are just empty words. It would be a disaster."

Brown tried to calm him down again, saying that the OECD Secretary-General would be publishing a list that afternoon and adding that he had personally made sure of that just a little while ago.

"But our communiqué needs to make reference to this list," Sarkozy objected. He was gesticulating wildly and having difficulty staying seated. "A clear connection has to be made between them. Otherwise this is all meaningless."

Angela Merkel wanted to say something, but was interrupted by President Kirchner of Argentina. The latter wanted to resume talking about her favorite issue, gold reserves. "Cristina, please don't get angry about this," Merkel urged. "Our formulation is a success for the poor countries."

Once again Brown tried to mediate and once again he failed. Kirchner refused to stop. Finally, the British prime minister tried to take command of the situation by exerting his authority: "I'm the chairman, Cristina."

This failed to make any impression at all on Kirchner. She kept on talking. "What Merkel is saying makes it sound like I don't want to help the African countries. If that's the way it came across I apologize. What I'm getting at here is the way things are being done. Changes are being made at the last minute. We can't operate this way. And by the way," she said, looking at Merkel, "I'm not angry at anyone."

Before the dispute between the two women could escalate further, Sarkozy started up again about his list: "I can't tolerate the fact that tax havens are riding roughshod over our principles. There can't be an agreement here unless this matter is addressed. I don't want to be unpleasant about this, but it is clear that we are at a historical crossroads here. This is a time for a decision. We need to say who is honest and who is dishonest."

Brown again tried to calm him down by saying, "Nicolas, keep in mind what it was that we agreed on here. The era of banking secrecy is over. I'll see to it that this list is published before you hold your press conference."

"But then what would be so bad about writing that into our communiqué?" Sarkozy asked. "If there are ulterior motives of some kind here then we should say so openly."

"I think there's a misunderstanding here," Brown said. "It's not us, it's the OECD who's publishing the list."

Sarkozy hung on doggedly: "Then just one short sentence: 'The G-20 welcome the fact that the OECD is publishing the list.'"

"Couldn't the solution be that we write into the annex that we welcome the fact that they published a list," Merkel suggested. "That way it wouldn't be in the main document, but it would be included somewhere."

Berlusconi chimed in at this point: "I'm with Angela and Nicolas on this. It won't look good if we don't make reference to the list. The media in my country will be hugely impressed if we do."

Sarkozy finally leaned back and relaxed. He had received the additional backing he needed and managed to get what he wanted. Brown proposed that they agree on the following formulation: "We note that the OECD has today published a list of countries assessed by the Global Forum against the international standard for exchange of tax information." After that there were no further objections.

Whether or not the final communiqué is, in the end, an effective document -- one that will help get the financial world back on its feet again -- will depend on each and every one of the G-20 countries and the extent to which they feel committed to implementing the goals agreed on. It is possible that the London summit will be a turning point, but it is by no means certain this will be the case.

But the mere fact that the G-20 leaders were able to arrive at an agreement on the contents of a joint communiqué after weeks of wrangling over principles can certainly be viewed as a success.

In the end, Germany and France gained points. To the disgruntlement of the British, the summit communiqué doesn't call for further stimulus programs, rather only for billions in funds for the IMF, most of which had already been decided on anyway.

While the promise to put new spending programs in place was expressed rather vaguely, statements regarding financial market controls were more concrete than expected. The G-20 not only approved a comprehensive list of new rules for banks, ratings agencies and hedge funds -- they also agreed to create a new international supervisory authority, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), as well as to accept Sarkozy's list. From now on, that list will include the names of tax havens that are unwilling to cooperate with other countries in efforts to identify tax evaders.

While this is all a step in the right direction, it is far from constituting a final victory over speculation and tax evasion. It will take years before the declarations of intent made in London are implemented in national legislation and it is unlikely the spirit of unity that informed the summit can be sustained over a longer period of time.

And even if these doubts should prove to be unjustified, the London G-20 summit will not really defuse the global economic crisis. The biggest dangers to the global economy weren't even addressed by the summit. The G-20 leaders paid no attention at all to the fact that bank balance sheets throughout the world continue to be burdened by toxic assets -- i.e., mortgage-based securities, now worthless, constituting total risks in the trillions of dollars, and to the problem constituted by deadlocked trade talks.

Since 2001 the international community has been engaged in trade talks known as the Doha development round, aimed at lowering tariffs and farm subsidies in Europe and the United States as well as protecting patents and brand names in Asia. If the countries involved could come to an agreement this would lead to a tremendous spike in international trade that would have the effect of a stimulus package in the current crisis situation.

The London summit failed to agree on a date for concluding the Doha round. The call by experts for the WTO in Geneva to be given a stronger say in these matters wasn't even put on the agenda for consideration.

Worse than that, the G-20 remained silent on growing imbalances in the global economy. Prior to the crisis consumers and companies in the United States accumulated debts on a gigantic scale. At the same time, countries like Germany, China and Japan showed considerable export surpluses. These imbalances are seen as being contributing causes of the current financial and economic crisis.

But instead of working to reduce existing imbalances, the countries in question seem to be intent on aggravating them further. The United States has created stimulus programs involving hundreds of billions of dollars that will expand an already huge public debt. Germany and China are providing support to their export industries with a view to continuing to achieve export surpluses. If a common strategy is not found soon that can overcome conflicting interests, the result could be new trade wars and currency instabilities.

As such, people in Asia, America and Europe have been left with mixed feelings about the outcome of the London summit. The G-20 leaders managed to avoid an open conflict, but their agreement basically served to deepen existing economic differences. Those of us who witnessed how passionately they squabbled over matters of secondary and tertiary importance have every reason to be skeptical that this situation is going to change any time soon.

It will take a number of further summits and policy shifts on the part of national governments before the G-20 will have earned the right to refer to itself as a global government that is looking to promote the good of the world as a whole. The world we saw in London was a world in transition. It was no longer the old world of nation states, but it was also not yet a new world capable of thinking in harmony.

When the G-20 leaders presented the results of the summit at their national press conferences on Thursday afternoon, they had Barack Obama's warning words -- not to sell the results of the summit short, not to show journalists the discord they want to see, and to display confidence -- echoing in their ears.

 

Translated from the German by Paul Cohen and Larry Fisher.

Dignified to the end, Marie Antoinette reportedly apologized for stepping on the executioner's foot: "Monsieur, I ask your pardon. I did not do it on purpose." Her husband, Louis XVI, also faced the end bravely, although his attempt to give a long-winded speech forgiving his enemies and calling for God's mercy was, quite literally, cut short. Robespierre, the revolution's greatest orator, went to his death with his jaw shattered from a gunshot wound, and could say nothing.

Ravachol, an implacable enemy of the French state and any other form of government ever devised or imagined, outdid them all. Condemned to death for three murders -- one he admitted and two he probably didn't commit -- Ravachol was a true believer in anarchist revolution, an advocate of ruthless acts of violence that would point toward the inevitable destruction of bourgeois society.

Indeed, it was because Ravachol was perceived as a symbolic scourge of an era typified by excesses of blinding wealth and grinding poverty that his execution became an object of nationwide fascination. What he represented (or seemed to) was at least as terrifying to 19th-century France as Islamic fundamentalism is to 21st-century America. It may all seem a bit quaint and romantic to our eyes -- wild-haired European men in dingy frock coats, armed with dynamite and pamphlets by Proudhon and Bakunin -- but anarchism in the 1890s was understood as a major threat to the social order, a long way from the lentils 'n' dreadlocks postgraduate subculture it is today.

As Yale historian John Merriman tells the story in his fascinating new book "The Dynamite Club," Ravachol was all smiles on the morning of his execution. He told the priest who approached him with a crucifix, "I don't give a damn about your Christ. Don't show him to me; I'll spit in his face." On his way to the scaffold, he sang a song, possibly of his own composition: "To be happy, God damn it, you have to kill those who own property! To be happy, God damn it, you must cut the priests in two!" He tried to shout "Vive la révolution!" at the last moment, while his head was in the guillotine's cradle, but got only halfway through the phrase before the blade fell.

There are other episodes one could identify as central to the anarchism panic of the 1890s, which marked the Western world's first encounter with terrorism, at least as we use that word today. In fact, Merriman's book recounts the Ravachol case only as a preamble to its main story, which is about the bombing of a ritzy Parisian cafe two years later by a different anarchist, Émile Henry. But to me the transformative, even electrifying effect of Ravachol's execution makes it a history-shaping moment and marks the invention of something new and distinctively modern.

Ravachol was a good-looking, mustachioed rogue, but he was also a career criminal and a thoroughly incompetent revolutionary. He made several efforts to kill prominent magistrates and prosecutors with bombs made from stolen dynamite, but none caused more than minor injuries or property damage. (The one murder Ravachol definitely committed was not political; he robbed and suffocated an elderly monk in a remote hilltop village.) As a charismatic martyr for the cause of violent anarchism, however, Ravachol was a smashing success. His patently one-sided prosecution and courageous death made him seem a hero to many people who shared none of his political beliefs. He inspired numerous followers and sent a tangible wave of fear through the mainstream French establishment. (Asked at his trial whether he had any regrets, Ravachol said he only regretted the society he saw around him.)

Sympathetic journalists portrayed Ravachol as a "redeemer" and compared his "sacrifice and suffering" to those of Jesus Christ, also executed at age 33. A wood-block print by artist Charles Maurin, depicting Ravachol's defiant face framed by the guillotine, was widely reprinted and pinned to the walls of working-class houses all over France. The anarchist newspaper Père Peinard taunted the bourgeoisie: "Ravachol's head has rolled at their feet; they fear it will explode, just like a bomb!" Art critic Félix Fénéon, a prominent anarchist sympathizer, observed that Ravachol's execution had done more for propaganda than all the learned books and pamphlets of Peter Kropotkin, anarchism's leading theorist. For some time to come the executed murderer's name became a French verb; "ravacholiser" meant to assassinate someone with dynamite.

Terrorist acts are in part meant to provoke the state into a Draconian overreaction, and there too Ravachol succeeded. Panicked by wild assertions that a "dynamite club" of several thousand anarchists was planning to murder the upper classes en masse, the French government (and every other major European nation) enacted increasingly repressive laws that outlawed all anarchist books and publications, ordered all foreign anarchists expelled, and repressed "associations of evildoers," a fatally vague phrase that was applied to all sorts of opposition newspapers, political groups and intellectual gatherings.

Public opinion turned against the French intelligentsia, Merriman writes, for providing anarchism with some measure of respectability. One nationalist screed titled "On Intellectual Complicity and Crimes of Opinion" blamed the wave of 1890s bombings on pamphlets by anarchist forefathers like Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta, but also on Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment," which the screed's anonymous author called "an admirable manual for assassination." I know, it all sounds strangely familiar, even if Merriman, a judicious historian to the end, makes only the most passing reference to contemporary parallels.

 

Among those inspired by Ravachol was the aforementioned Émile Henry, whose bombing of the Café Terminus in 1894 is the principal subject of Merriman's book. Unlike Ravachol, who was raised by a single mother in extreme poverty and lived by odd jobs and petty crimes, Henry was a genuine son of the bourgeoisie who turned against his own tribe. He had grown up in a quiet country town just outside Paris, where his mother kept an inn. He excelled in school, and had barely missed admission to the École polytechnique, France's most prestigious college for engineers. (He could have reapplied, but never did.) He worked at various clerical and accounting jobs, where his employers invariably found him diligent and pleasant.

Yet somehow this promising and intelligent young man, who was initially horrified by Ravachol's indiscriminate bombings of apartment buildings, became the author of that era's most notorious attack. At about 8 p.m. on Feb. 12, 1894, Henry entered the Café Terminus, a big and bustling Gilded Age establishment around the corner from the Gare Saint-Lazare, where he ordered two beers and smoked a cigar. (He paid, even though he was about to blow the place up. A proper bourgeois after all.) An hour later, there were about 350 people in the place, and the orchestra was playing operatic music by Daniel Auber. Henry got up to leave. Once outside he took a homemade dynamite bomb, concealed in a workman's lunch-bucket, out of his overcoat, lit the fuse with his cigar, and threw the device behind him into the cafe, where it struck a chandelier, fell to the floor and exploded.

Only one person died in the Terminus bombing, which made it pretty wimpy even by Henry's standards. (His previous bombing, although aimed at a mining company, had killed three police officers, a secretary and an office boy.) There were dozens of injuries and a popular nightspot lay in ruins, but the real effect was psychological.

As Merriman sees it, this was the first time a political terrorist had envisioned ordinary people as a legitimate target, or attacked the public life of a major city. There are other candidates for this dubious honor: One could point to the spectacular "William Tell" bombing a year earlier in Barcelona, in which 22 theatergoers were killed. (Arguably that was more targeted, in the sense that the orchestra level of a luxurious theater was the province of the ruling class.) Whoever thought of it first, the point is that at least a few violent anarchists had moved rapidly from the theoretical notion that society should be destroyed to the idea that leaders of that society deserved to die and then to the sweeping conception that anyone who supported the existing society, even as a citizen and a consumer, was effectively guilty of crimes against humanity.

Henry spelled it out for his interrogators, shortly after his arrest: He hadn't been after a particular magistrate or attorney, in the manner of other anarchist bombers, "but rather the entire bourgeoisie, of which the former was only a representative." Café Terminus was a fancy enough place, but it also stood at the heart of an increasingly fluid metropolis and was in no sense exclusive to the rich. For the price of a coffee or a glass of beer, middle-class and even working-class people could and did drop in for a glimpse of the good life.

Henry understood as soon as he was arrested that he had no chance of avoiding the guillotine, and he admitted full responsibility for the bombing. The only defense he offered at his trial was a lengthy declaration of his ideas and motives. In his statement, Henry attacked the ordinary petit-bourgeois citizens of Paris, those who lived on 300 to 500 francs a month (a middle-class income, more or less) and who applauded the actions of the government and the police. They were "stupid and pretentious," he said, "always lining up on the side of the strongest."

Anarchists had no respect for human life, he said, because the bourgeoisie had shown none. "We will spare neither women nor children because the women and children we love have not been spared," Henry continued, making it clear that he was directly blaming the complacent classes for the misery that existed on the other side of the Gilded Age's shocking social divide. "Are they not innocent victims, these children, who in the faubourgs slowly die of anemia, because bread is rare at home; these women who in your workshops suffer exhaustion and are worn out in order to earn 40 cents a day, happy that misery has not yet forced them into prostitution; these old men whom you have turned into machines so that they can produce their entire lives and whom you throw out into the street when they have been completely depleted?"

He understood that he and many other anarchists would be killed, as Ravachol and others had been killed before him, Henry told the court. "But what you can never destroy is anarchy. Its roots are too deep, born in a poisonous society which is falling apart; anarchism is a violent reaction against the established order. It represents the egalitarian and libertarian aspirations which are opening a breach in contemporary authority. It is everywhere, which makes anarchy elusive. It will finish by killing you."

You can say many things about Ravachol's brutal, charismatic nihilism, and about Henry's colder and more rational argument that ordinary citizens should suffer the consequences for deeds they permit, even passively or unknowingly, to be done in their name. You can say that they're cruel and deranged, but taken together they possess an almost biblical clarity. For better or for worse, these two ideas are the twin pillars of terrorism -- the urge to destroy, and the moral rationale for destruction -- and they've been with us ever since. Allowing for differences in terminology and context, you could say that Ravachol and Henry's attitudes and arguments are essentially similar to those of Palestinian terrorists who send suicide bombers into Tel Aviv restaurants, or for that matter to those of Osama bin Laden.

Courtroom observers were mightily impressed with Henry's declaration. As one conservative journalist wrote at the time, "He is perhaps a monster, but he is not a coward." Yet when Henry himself went to his date with "la Veuve" early on the morning of May 21, 1894 -- he lacked Ravachol's swagger, but did shout "Vive l'anarchie!" on his way to the scaffold -- the crowd was relatively small, and public reaction afterward was muted. Henry never became anything close to a populist martyr; I guess telling the public it is stupid, pretentious and guilty of terrible crimes will do that.

Henry's execution marked the beginning of the end of the anarchist panic in France, even if it didn't feel that way at the time. (An extended anarchist panic in the United States still lay ahead, from the assassination of President McKinley by a laid-off factory worker in 1901 through the Wall Street bombing of 1920 and the Sacco and Vanzetti case in 1927.) A couple of aftershocks followed rapidly: French President Sadi Carnot was stabbed to death in his carriage on the main street of Lyon in June 1894, apparently in an effort to avenge Henry. Two months later the government arrested a group of 30 anarchists and supporters, including several leading intellectuals, and tried them on wide-ranging and flimsy conspiracy charges.

As Merriman reads the historical evidence today, both sides -- the French government and the anarchist left -- backed away from an escalating confrontation. Although he defended himself eloquently, Henry had done enormous damage to the anarchist cause. Relatively few anarchists had supported bombing campaigns to begin with, and even those who believed in revolutionary violence saw a big difference between blowing up judges and blowing up cappuccino drinkers. Pioneer Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta had warned: "Hate does not produce love, and by hate one cannot remake the world."

At the same time, after the "Trial of the 30" collapsed in the autumn of 1894, with all the intellectual defendants acquitted, the French government gradually abandoned its most repressive measures. In Merriman's view, the attempt to crush anarchism had resulted only in a worsening climate of class hatred and in more bombings and killings. When anarchists were allowed to come up from underground, they channeled their "egalitarian and libertarian aspirations" into nonviolent political activities. Many became involved in the labor movement that would reshape 20th-century France as a social-welfare state, significantly lessening the brutal economic divisions that had fueled revolutionary violence in the first place.

Are there lessons in this history that apply to the "war on terror" recently inherited by the Obama administration. Merriman's general principle seems to be that in this kind of crisis, both the terrorists seeking to overthrow established order and the authorities seeking to crush them tend to overreach themselves. Each side is likely to do more damage to its own cause than to its purported enemy. I mean, think about it: Which will be worse for the United States over the long haul: 9/11 or Guantánamo Bay?

There are murkier, more psychological realms beyond that where a mainstream historian like Merriman simply isn't going to venture. These lie in the terrain first explored by Marx and Freud, those semi-discredited totems of the last century, and in a question that Ann Coulter and Noam Chomsky might answer in the same way: Does Western civilization contain the seeds of its own destruction? Or to put it another way, will Ravachol and Henry always be with us?

For Marx, this was a question of historical inevitability: The advanced industrial economy of capitalism would produce one commodity above all others, a worldwide proletariat that would smash capitalism. For Freud, this was a question of an endless, irresolvable struggle within the self and within society, a struggle between Eros and Thanatos, between sexual desire and the death wish. For a massively influential strand of 20th-century philosophy rooted in the "Frankfurt school" of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, this was the "dialectic of Enlightenment" -- the idea that the cultural and scientific flowering of modernity had also produced the death camps and the atom bomb.

French philosopher Jean Baudrillard's widely misinterpreted remark that America had secretly desired a calamity like 9/11 belongs to this tradition. It was not an apology for terrorism but an attempt to make sense of it within an analytical framework (albeit a controversial one). With increasingly rare exceptions -- John Walker Lindh in one direction, Timothy McVeigh in another -- Western society in its late consumer-capitalist phase no longer produces its own internal enemies. The job of being the nihilist force that aims "at nothing less than the destruction of all that exists," in the phrase of an outraged French legislator, has been outsourced.

As either Bill or Ted observes in one of their excellent adventures, those who forget the pasta are doomed to reheat it. In a time of economic crisis bordering on catastrophe, it's tempting to speculate once again that Western civilization teeters over the abyss, its enemies closing in on all sides. One of these days the gloomsayers may be right. But on the evidence available to date, capitalism has a way of absorbing these things after it produces them. By the afternoon of Feb. 13, 1894, a day after Émile Henry's bomb, the Café Terminus was open for business. The windows were smashed and there were visible bloodstains on the floor, and anybody who was anybody in Paris wanted to take a look. And maybe enjoy a beverage or two.