Rosenfeldt Interview: “Cruel World of Conspiracies.”

Professor Niels Erik Rosenfeldt, of the University of Copenhagen, gave a well-attended lecture at the University of Iceland 10 September 2012 on the Secret Apparatus of Comintern, on which he has published books in Danish and English. This event formed a part of a series of lectures organised jointly by RNH and AECR, the Allicance of European Conservatives and Reformists. The topic has been much-discussed in Iceland after the publication of books by Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson and Professor Thor Whitehead on the Icelandic communist movement where they stress its nature as a revolutionary movement, closely connected with Moscow. Several Comintern agents visited Iceland in the 1920s and 1930, and more than twenty Icelanders were trained at the Comintern secret schools in Moscow. In his lecture, Rosenfeldt said that in British files he had discovered some secret messages with instructions to the Icelandic communists, sent from Moscow via Copenhagen. The British Secret Service had succeeded in intercepting and decoding those messages.

In the question time after the lecture, Thor Whitehead briefly discussed the significance of those messages that he had also found. Rosenfeldt said that there was no evidence suggesting that the Icelandic students at the secret Moscow schools were exempt from the obligatory military training given in these schools. An interview with Professor Rosenfeldt was published in Morgunbladid 13 September. Rosenfeldt’s lecture is available here on Youtube.

Ridley giving his lecture. Professor Arnason chairing.

Dr. Matthew Ridley, former science editor of The Economist, and the author of many best-selling books on science, especially genetics, gave a lecture at The University of Iceland 27 July 2012 on Rational Optimism. The meeting was jointly held by RNH and the Institute of Public Administration and Politics at the University of Iceland, and is a part of a series of lectures on “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”, organised in cooperation with AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists. Ridley emphasised how much progress had been made in the last few hundred years, and traced it back to man’s capacity to exchange goods and services and thus to avail himself of more knowledge than he possessed himself. A system of free exchange, catallaxy, as F. A. Hayek calls it, has developed to the benefit of all.

Morgunbladid editorial on Ridley.

Ridley’s lecture was well attended and generated much publicity. Vidskiptabladid gave an account of Ridley’s debate with Bill Gates on global warming and African development 26 July, and Morgunbladid published an interview with Ridley 27 July, an account of the lecture 30 July, and an editorial on Ridley’s message the same day. The website visir.is published an article about Ridley 29 July, based on an interview by the television station Stod tvo, for its Sunday Show 29 July. Almenna bokafelagid decided to have Ridley’s book, The Rational Optimist, translated into Icelandic, to be published in the spring of 2014. Ridley’s lecture is available here on Youtube.

HHG.Rio.19.06.2012

Rain forest. Photo: Ivo M. Vermeulen

RNH held an informal seminar, jointly with the US Reason Foundation, 19 June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, in connection with the international conference on the environment, Rio+20, which was organised twenty years after the Rio conference on the environment. Professor Hannes H. Gissurarson and Julian Morris, Vice President for research at the Reason Foundation, spoke at the seminar. In his talk, Professor Gissurarson distinguished between four types of environmental challenges, pollution, over-exploitation of natural resources, endangered species, and threats to the wilderness. An example of the first kind of problem was the “money smell” or odour from herring processing plants in Icelandic fishing towns, of the second kind overfishing in the open sea and overgrazing in mountain pastures, of the third kind whaling in the North Atlantic and the killing of elephants and rhinos in Africa, and of the fourth kind hydroelectric power plants in mountains and the cultivation of land covered with rain forests. Professor Gissurarson submitted that the solution of those environmental problems was to define more clearly and more rigorously individual rights and duties, for example by creating private property rights. Environmental protection required environmental protectors. The environment had to be taken into account, in the literal sense. Professor Gissurarson quoted research by Professor Thrainn Eggertsson on grazing rights in the Icelandic mountain pastures and by Professor Ragnar Arnasonon fishing rights, individual transferable quotas, in the Icelandic waters.

Julian Morris

Julian Morris spoke about free market environmentalism: the research programme developed by economists in the last few decades on how to use free market forces, private property rights and the price mechanism, to both protect and develop the environment. One of the participants at the seminar was Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine. He had attended the original 1992 Rio conference on the environment.

Professor Gissurarson’s talk formed a part of the research project “Europe, Iceland and the Future of Capitalism”, jointly organised by RNH and AECR, the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists. Professor Gissurarson is also the leader of a research project on “Environmental Protection, Property Rights and Natural Resources” at the Social Science Research Institute at the University of Iceland and Instituto Millenium in Rio de Janeiro. Some Icelanders were delegates at the Rio+20 conference, including Arni Mathiesen, the director of the Fishing and Aquaculture Section of FAO in Rome. RNH gave a reception for them on Iceland’s national holiday, 17 June 2012, with Iceland’s consul in Rio de Janeiro, Mr. Kaare Ringseth, in attendance, with a toast being given to Jon Sigurdsson, the 19th Century leader of Iceland’s fight for independence.

Gissurarson Slides 19.06.2012