Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (JAF) is a concise, self-contained, and up to date presentation of Rawls’ views. The book originated as a set of lectures for a political philosophy course that Rawls taught for many years at Harvard. In their most revised form, the lectures fully incorporated the reformulation of the theory of justice as fairness put forward in Political Liberalism (PL) of 1993. While JAF does not present any theoretical departures from PL, it deals with important topics Rawls never fully addressed before such as Marx’s critique of liberalism and the moral short-comings of welfare state capitalism. (A welfare state, unlike a property-owning democracy or a liberal democratic socialist regime, he says, is incapable of realizing the main values of justice as fairness.) Rawls’ long-time readers will also be pleased to find that JAF includes careful replies to Sandel, Sen, Okin and other critics on issues ranging from health care to the legal status of gender differences. Much less dense than TJ, and far more perspicuous than the PL, JAF will surely be the text henceforth used to teach Rawls in political philosophy courses.

Justice as fairness has strong ties to the social contract tradition: principles of justice conceived of as basic terms of social cooperation are to be selected in a fair choice situation (the "original position"). The justification of the principles proceeds in two stages. In the first, the principles are provisionally selected as specifying basic terms of social cooperation. In the second, it is demonstrated that the conception of justice codified by those principles has the required property of being stable. Rawls characterizes a conception of justice as stable when those brought up in a society effectively regulated or "well-ordered" by its principles would (by known laws of moral psychology) acquire a strong allegiance to basic social institutions. The need to meet this requirement has motivated Rawls in his recent thinking to pursue what he describes as a "political" conception of justice.

According to Rawls, a pluralism of incompatible, yet reasonable comprehensive doctrines is characteristic of a society with liberal democratic institutions. (A philosophical, religious, or moral doctrine is described as "comprehensive" when it includes "conceptions of what is of value in human life, and ideals of personal character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational relationships, and much else that is to inform our conduct, and in the limit to our life as a whole." Since no one comprehensive doctrine is endorsed by all citizens in a pluralistic society, no such doctrine can be used to justify terms of social cooperation that will be acceptable to all. Instead, a conception of justice must be purely political or "freestanding," drawing only upon certain fundamental ideas of personhood, society, and reason implicit in the public, political culture of a democratic society. These ideas are used to structure the original position. They are the shared point of departure for deliberation on principles; it is presupposed that all those who enter into the original position accept them. Only a political conception of justice, Rawls thinks, will be able to win the support of what he calls an "overlapping consensus" of reasonable comprehensive doctrines. The support of an overlapping consensus is necessary condition of a conception’s stability in a pluralistic context.

Due to the destruction of refining capabilities by hurricanes, and an expectedly large decline in commercial oil reserves in recent days, the New York market, for the first time, closed on a price above 80 U.S. dollars per barrel on Sept. 13; and hit a new record in the history of nominal prices. As a matter of fact, oil prices have been rising since 2002 at a pace and with a lasting time rarely seen in "peace" time. So, what exactly is behind this round of price hikes?

Firstly, an increasingly short supply of oil in the world is the fundamental cause. According to statistics from the British firm BP, the world has been demanding more oil than can be produced since 1981; and the case is still the same today. Currently, oil production in most countries has already or will soon go down - leaving less of a surplus to use - but at the same time, demand keeps increasing. The supply remains tight and prices keep soaring despite OPEC's decision to increase crude oil production by 500,000 barrels per day as of Nov. 1. With little price elasticity from both demand and supply, any trivial event will send prices skyrocketing.

Secondly, short-term speculations on oil futures by large amounts of funding also drive prices up. A Citi report in May 2006 mentioned that U.S. commodity markets hold an average speculation volume of over 120 billion US dollars each month, chiefly coming from natural gas (30.3 billion dollars) and crude oil (30.1 billion dollars). The numerous speculation deals have a massive impact on oil futures prices considering the leverage effect of futures margin deals. With excessive liquidity worldwide, funds behind oil futures speculations will remain the same.

Thirdly, the U.S. government's pursuit of a weak dollar policy in recent years has also contributed, to a certain degree, to the hike in oil prices. Almost all oil deals worldwide are priced in US dollars; and the dollar's devaluation puts on the pressure for higher oil prices. To maintain an income and purchasing power, raising prices has become a major strategy of OPEC members. According to studies, when the dollar devalues by 1 percent, it causes an oil price hike of the same degree. In addition, technical, meteorological and political elements also affect prices.

It should be noted that although nominal oil prices hit one peak after another, actual prices still remained below historical records; and have a relatively limited impact on the world economy. It appears that the present world economic aggregate is much bigger than that during the oil crisis in the 1970s; but now countries are much stronger in their ability to macro-regulate. Developed countries, in particular, use energies less crazily. Therefore, high oil prices now have a much smaller impact on the world economy than in the past.

The easiest among the rich Islamic societies to study is Saudi Arabia. One single statistic is most telling in detailing the failure of Saudi society to grow - despite being the largest producer of crude oil in the world, Saudi Arabia actually imports most of its fuel, eg diesel and refined products such as lubricants. [1]

The failure of industry is in essence a failure of capitalism. In most countries where wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few - such as the "robber barons" period of US history in the early 20th century or today's Russia - a functioning financial system helped to intermediate risks.

This is not possible in strict Islamic societies as the religion bans usury, thus disallowing the flow of capital to the people needing it the most, ie, young entrepreneurs. Faced with uneconomic returns at home, most Middle Eastern rulers deposit their money at higher rates with European banks.

A second failure in Saudi society is the absence of appropriate education for restless youth. [2] Religious education, rather than grounding in modern sciences, remains the norm. Thus while the production of muezzins is guaranteed, hiring a petroleum engineer can be tricky. In turn, this causes an excessive reliance on "infidel" immigrants, which in turn creates a multi-tier society, focusing much of the anger of locals on the wrong targets - the people who take their jobs, rather than the ones in government and religious schools who actually caused the situation to emerge.

Religious education also produces famously insular people. A US magazine's poll of Arab youth found that very few had heard of the Apollo moon landings, and indeed all of them dismissed such feats as US propaganda. The notion that human beings could land on the moon would appear far-fetched to anyone who holds the satellite as a celestial object rather than an astronomical oddity.

The rule of irony with which I started this article holds true here - in the Dark Ages for Europe, it was Islamic societies that led the world in the adoption and spread of science and technology. While they cannot claim to have invented much, as credit goes to the Chinese and Indian civilizations, they certainly used inventions to their advantage well before the Europeans caught on.

The Kyoto Protocol was initially adopted on Dec. 11, 1997 in Kyoto, Japan and entered into force on Feb. 16, 2005. As of November 2009, 187 states have signed and ratified the pact.

It establishes a "common but differentiated" principle, recognizing an obligation by the rich to compensate for the climate damage they have done and by the poor to raise their peoples from poverty.

At the upcoming conference, rich and poor nations will argue over the legal structure of the post-Kyoto deal.

The United States, which is responsible for 36 percent of the 1990 emission levels, still refuses to adopt Kyoto, saying its binding emissions targets are too expensive for the American economy.

The country has been pushing for another approach, in which emitters will make pledges that will be open to scrutiny but not exposed to tough penalties.

The European Union, seeing itself as a champion in the fight against climate change, has signalled that it wants a new overall treaty that will include the United States, rather than a second round of commitments under Kyoto.

At the last negotiating session in Barcelona, Spain, before the Copenhagen conference, Ibrahim Mirghani Ibrahim, chairman of Group-77 Developing Countries, said "the Group will strongly stand against all attempts by developed countries to reach an agreement which would in any way result in superseding the the Kyoto Protocol or making it redundant（多余的）."

As climate change is pushing the world towards a low-carbon future, the Copenhagen conference is compared to the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 during which over 700 delegates from 44 nations signed an agreement to rebuild the international economic system as World War II was still raging.

Thus, although it is almost impossible for the Copenhagen conference to produce an outcome that meets the demands of all parties, it will still be a historic turning point in the fight against climate change.

There are many reasons for the growth of foreign exchange reserves.

One of the primary reasons is the imbalance of international payments. In recent years, with the rapid growth of China's trade surplus and foreign investment, foreign capital has streamed steadily into the country. As a result, the amount of revenue from international payments is larger than that of expenditure. In the inter-bank foreign exchange market the supply of foreign exchange has continued to exceed the demand. In order to keep the RMB exchange rate at a stable level, the central bank has had to buy large amounts of foreign exchange, resulting in the rapid growth of foreign exchange reserves.

Probing further into the causes, it is possible to see that the major cause of the imbalance in international payments is insufficient domestic demand, especially consumer demand. There is an identical equation for national income: savings minus investment equals exports minus imports. Income equals savings plus consumption, so when China's consumption rate fell after reform and opening up, the savings rate rose quickly, reaching 47.9 percent last year. When the savings rate exceeds the investment rate, exports will exceed imports, thereby creating a trade surplus and triggering an imbalance in international payments.

Secondly, the purpose of implementing a foreign-related economic management policy in the long term is to encourage exports, restrict imports, encourage the inflow of foreign exchange and restrict the outflow of foreign exchange.

Another reason for the growth relates to the inadequate formulation system for the foreign exchange rate, tax rate and factor prices. The RMB exchange rate is the price of foreign currency in RMB. As the price lever and the "invisible hand", the exchange rate, through floating, should be able to regulate the supply and demand of foreign exchange. In the past the RMB exchange rate has been too stable and lacked the necessary flexibility. It cannot correct the oversupply. In addition, foreign capital is now given super-national tax treatment; cost factors have been held down artificially; foreign investors and exporters have certain advantages when they pay for land, water and utilities; and they do not pay the real cost of labor because of the imperfect social security system. These factors have contributed to the tendency of one-sided foreign trade development and promoted the inflow of foreign exchange.