Pardo giving his talk.

At a meeting organised by the Icelandic Pen Club and the Reykjavik Municipal Libary Saturday 10 October the poet and blogger Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo gave a talk on human rights violations in Cuba. Writer Sjon was in the chair. After persecution by Castro’s secret police, Pardo decided to move to the United States. In his lecture, he expressed surprise at the belief that by criticizing oppression in Cuba he had somehow become a U.S. Republican. It was an indisputable fact that the Cuban regime was one of censorship and suppression of all dissent, all divergence. Writers who dared criticize the rulers or even just to discuss matters not supposed to be on the agenda were monitored, threatened, imprisoned, often tortured and sometimes executed. Pardo said that he regarded himself as a leftist, but Westerners should not close their eyes to the oppression on this tropical, distant island.

Pardo showed a slide which compared the arrangements of the Icelandic parliament where the seats of different parties were shown in different colours and of the Cuban National Assembly where all representatives belonged to one party and where hence all the seats were of the same colour. Pardo presented many slides with photographs of persecuted Cuban intellectuals, including Carlos Franqui who had been removed from photographs after he turned against communism. Pardo also showed clips from Castro’s speeches including the notorious one on 13 March 1963 where he attacked tight jeans worn by some Cuban youth as being “feminine”.  In his talk, Pardo described the mass migration out of Cuba. Many Cubans had voted with their feet or with their oars, by fleeing or moving from Cuba. In Pardo’s judgement, Raúl Casto who had replaced his brother Fidel as dictator, had not significantly liberalised the country. It was most likely that Raúl’s son would succeed him, making Cuba a hereditary state like North Korea.

The meeting was well-attended, but little mention was made of the past fervour by which many Icelanders supported the Castro régime. Magnus Kjartansson, editor of Socialist newspaper Thjodviljinn, had travelled to Cuba in 1962, had had discussions with Che Guevara and had listened to some of Castro’s marathon speeches.  The people he met included Carlos Franqui, mentioned in Pardo’s lecture. In Iceland, Kjartansson published a travelogue praising Castro. Some Icelanders, including Silja Adalsteinsdottir, for a while also an editor of Thjodviljinn, and Pall Halldorsson, militant leader of the public employees’ association, had also been volunteers harvesting sugar for Castro. The last action of the People’s Alliance, dissolved in 1998, was to send a delegation to Cuba on the invitation of the Cuban Communist Party. The delegates included Margret Frimannsdottir, last Chairman of the People’s Alliance, and Svavar Gestsson, the East Germany-trained Chairman of the People’s Alliance in 1980–1987. The delegation asked for a meeting — or rather an audience — with Castro who however did not bother to meet them. The support of RNH for this meeting forms a part of the joint project with AECR, Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe of the Victims: Remembering Communism”.

Photo: Kristinn Einarsson.

Environmental protection can be reasonable, whereas demands for it have often been characterised by fanaticism and irresponsibility, Professor Rognvaldur Hannesson argued at a conference held in his honour by RNH and the School of Social Sciences and the Economics Faculty of the University of Iceland Thursday 8 October 2015. In his lecture, Hannesson gave an outline of his recent book, Ecofundamentalism. There, he made a distinction between “wise use” environmentalism and ecofundamentalism where people ascribe special rights to “Nature” against man. Hannesson submitted that ecofundamentalism was religious in nature. He pointed out that almost all the predictions in Limits to Growth—which appeared in an Icelandic translation in 1974—have been wide off the mark; that the so-called precautionary principle is more of a paralysing principle, because it hinders experiments and therefore progress; that it remains unclear whether global warming is undesirable, as it is difficult to demonstrate that the present climate is the best one possible; that oil and coal are cheap sources of energy and simple to utilise; and that the rate of population increase has gone down in the last few decades, while food production per acre has vastly increased.

Professor Rognvaldur Hannesson is an internationally renowned expert on resource economics, the author of around 100 refereed papers and six books. Professor Bengt Kristrom of Umea University in Sweden and Julian Morris, Director of Academic Studies at the Reason Foundation in the United States, responded to Hannesson’s lecture. Dr. Dadi Mar Kristofersson, President of the School of Social Sciences, introduced Hannesson, and Professor Tor Einarsson, Chairman of the Economics Faculty, chaired the meeting which was well-attended. Whereas Hannesson has spent his professional career abroad, mostly at the Norwegian School of Business in Bergen, some of his old schoolmates from Iceland turned up for his lecture. On the day of the conference, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson published in the leading Icelandic daily Morgunbladid an article on Hannesson’s book, describing some of the main arguments in Hannesson’s book. According to him, Hannesson’s message was similar to that of Bjorn Lomborg, whose book on the Sceptical Environmentalist was published in Icelandic in 2000, and of Matt Ridley, whose book on the Rational Optimist was published in Icelandic in 2014. In the evening, Education and Culture Minister Illugi Gunnarsson gave a dinner in Hannesson’s honour. The RNH participation in this event forms a part of the joint project with AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”.

Ragnar Árnason flytur fyrirlestur sinn.

The regional meeting of the European Students for Liberty, ESFL, which took place in Reykjavik Saturday 3 October 2015 was well-attended and very successful. Attendees included not only university students, but also many from senior high schools or grammar schools in the Reykjavik region. RNH supported the conference in various ways. The Chairman of RNH’s Academic Council, Professor Ragnar Arnason, spoke on free markets and property rights. RNH’s Director of Academic Studies, Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson, held a reception at his home for the foreign guests. Gisli Hauksson, RNH’s Chairman of the Board, organised a reception hosted by Gamma, a rapidly growing fund management company. The participation of RNH in the conference forms a part of the joint project with AECR, Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, on “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”. Other speakers at the conference were business affairs reporter Asgeir Ingvarsson who spoke on the impact of immigration on income distribution, Icelandic MP Sigridur Andersen who discussed the relationship between politics and ideals, Roderick T. Long, Philosophy Professor at Auburn University, who described “left-wing liberalism” or the alliance of libertarians and radical leftists, both of whom are sceptical of government and hierarchies, and investor Heidar Gudjonsson, who analysed public debt in Western democracies and traced its accumulation, unsustainable in some countries, to the government monopoly of producing money. While the attendees at the conference disagreed on many issues, they generally welcomed the fresh and innovative ideas put forward there. The conference was moderated by Lukas Schweiger, originally from Austria, but residing at present in Iceland, and Eyd Aradottir from the Faroe Islands, now residing in Denmark. The conference was taped by the Sons of Libertas, and parts of it, as well as interviews with some speakers, will be included in a documentary produced by the SoL.

Slides of Ragnar Arnason