Editor’s Note: The Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual human-rights conference, took place from May 7 to 9, in the Norwegian capital. The previous parts of Jay Nordlinger’s journal are at the following links: I, II, III, IV, V, and VI.

Standing now on the stage of the Christiania Theatre is Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN reporter. She is talking, I believe, about the culpability of all. Not sure. Anyway, she notes that Wernher von Braun worked for the Nazis in his native Germany, and then worked for the Americans, who were pointing missiles at the Soviet Union. She plays a clip of Tom Lehrer singing one of his famous parodies: “‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department,’ says Wernher von Braun.”

I can only tell you this: I’m damn glad that the U.S. had the services of Wernher von Braun, who helped the civilized world check the monstrous, expansionist, mass-murdering power of the Soviet Union. (He also put men on the moon.) About this Kraut’s presence in Alabama, I don’t feel a trace of shame. You?

‐Nicolás Pérez, an Ecuadorean newspaper executive, tells about the depredations of Rafael Correa, that country’s presidential dictator (if that’s the right term). He plays several video clips of this character. I remark to another Ecuadorean, “He’s awfully charismatic, isn’t he? They so often are, these caudillos and strongmen. It’s a kind of curse for society.” My Ecuadorean friend says, “Correa is full of rage and resentment. He is too crude to be genuinely charismatic. Too rough. You know who’s really got it? Hugo Chávez, unfortunately. A masterly, highly dangerous performer.”

‐Ahmed al-Omran is the writer of a blog called “Saudi Jeans.” I’m touched by something he says, here in Oslo: “I started this blog just for fun, and to practice my English.” He says that “nothing they can do” — “they” meaning hard-liners, the forces of dirigisme — “can reverse the tide of history.”

I have written about this “tide of history,” or “right side of history,” business before — for an essay published in National Review in April 2011, go here. It’s called “The Right Side of History: It’s bunk.” Still, I admire Omran’s spirit.

(Quick pun: What do you call a four-bagger in Saudi Arabia? An Omran. Nyuk nyuk.)

‐Asma Jahangir is a formidable, formidable woman. She is a Pakistani lawyer who works for women’s rights, and human rights. She has been beaten and threatened with death too many times to count. Her father was a dissident, and political prisoner, and her mother was a similar free-thinker.

She talks about a particular case: She defended a 13-year-old boy, who was accused of blasphemy. A judge acquitted him. The judge was murdered. I can only think, “Bless that judge — a brave and good man.”

Jahangir says that Islamists “use the ladder of democracy to get to the top and then saw it off.”

And I wish — I wish — you could hear her mock Western governments. For several years, she was a rapporteur at the U.N. for freedom of religion. And the Westerners, she says, “were so afraid, so politically correct.” In imitation of them, she trembles in fear, and makes her voice quaver. Priceless.

‐Among the attendees at the Freedom Forum is Bruce Bawer, the American writer who lives in Norway, and is a leading expert on this country. In a February column, I talked about his recently published e-book, The New Quislings: How the International Left Used the Oslo Massacre to Silence Debate About Islam. And I wrote, “Bawer makes a lot of people in Norway, the rest of Scandinavia, and Europe at large uncomfortable. There’s a good reason for that: He cuts very close to the bone. He holds up a mirror, I believe, from which many would rather turn away.”

Yes. Bruce is sometimes called anti-Norwegian — a foe of Norwegians. Nonsense. He’s one of the best friends they could have. He wants them to succeed, and to avoid the traps into which they stumble.

I think of a line from an old song: “Who else but a bosom buddy will sit down and level, and give you the devil, will sit down and tell you the truth?”

‐My old friend Jim O’Neill, now of the Thiel Foundation, opens a session with a Solzhenitsyn quote: “Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you — you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.”

‐Mauricio Rodas, of the Ethos Foundation, makes a very familiar point — but a point I enjoy hearing again, and one that deserves the widest circulation: Gang members, all over the world? What they most strongly seek is family. Think of the family — a proper, Cleaver-like family, so mocked and battered. It is probably the best “gang” there is.

‐Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Foundation is here. His cause is the legalization of drugs, and he says that drug laws in the United States and elsewhere constitute serious human-rights violations. His cause, he believes, deserves its place among the other causes here at the Oslo Freedom Forum. Obviously the organizers believe so too.

I don’t believe it, my friends. Ethan is a swell guy. So are the organizers. The swellest. But I do not believe this. Genocide, slavery, gulags — U.S. drug laws?

We all know what free advice is worth, but I think there’s one part of Ethan’s act he would do well to drop. He notes the large number of black Americans in our prisons, and says that apartheid South Africa had nothing on us. Listen: American prisoners are in prison because they broke the law — skin color aside. The South African system was based on race.

This is not a petty distinction but a yawning difference.

‐Ethan Nadelmann has kind of roared through his speech — has given a theatrical, emotional presentation (which can of course be very effective). The next speaker, Ausama Monajed, is totally different in style. He speaks in calm, measured, matter-of-fact tones. He might as well be ordering Chinese food. A Syrian, he speaks about the slaughter of his fellow citizens in the streets by the Assad dictatorship.

Everything he says is arresting. Some children scrawled some anti-government graffiti. They were jailed and returned without their fingernails. Possession of a cellphone with a camera can be a death sentence. Activists caught filming demonstrations are beaten and killed. We see some pictures, of corpses — not pretty corpses.

Monajed also pays tribute to foreign journalists who were killed when trying to report on Syria to the rest of the world — including Britain’s Marie Colvin.

At the end of his talk, Monajed says (and as usual throughout this journal, I paraphrase), “The youth are no longer afraid. The psychological barrier of fear has been broken. No longer will they accept humiliation by the Assad regime. The downfall of the regime will occur. It’s no longer a question of whether but of when. Assad lost his legitimacy a long time ago. Our cause will succeed sooner rather than later. But it needs international support.”

Uh-oh — I wouldn’t wait up nights, my friend.

‐A musical interlude comes courtesy of Leah Siegel, a singer-songwriter from New York (and the daughter of the NPR personality Robert Siegel). I will refrain from music criticism (I mean no pun with “refrain”). I’m off duty — wearing another hat.

‐In a grand finale, Garry Kasparov and Emil Constantinescu appear onstage. Kasparov is the great chess player and Russian oppositionist. He has recently become the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, the outfit that Thor Halvorssen runs in New York (a sister outfit, I take it, to the Freedom Forum). In this role, Kasparov succeeds the late Václav Havel. Constantinescu is the former president of Romania — and a man of immense dignity. One of the most dignified figures you will ever encounter.

They are here to present the first-ever Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent. Recipients of the award are given a statuette of the Goddess of Democracy — the emblem of the Tiananmen Square uprising.

Both Constantinescu and Kasparov knew Havel, of course. Kasparov recalls a conversation he had with him: Havel was absolutely disgusted by those who negotiated with tyrannical regimes without insisting on discussion of human rights. As Kasparov recounts, Havel said, “Ronald Reagan negotiated with the Soviets, talking to them about nuclear arms and geopolitics. But he always put political prisoners on the table.” To illustrate his point, says Kasparov, Havel tossed down a menu on the table at which they were seated. He put it on the table, forcefully.

There are three recipients of the Havel prize in this inaugural year: Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist; Manal al-Sharif, the Saudi human-rights activist (who drove a car, and posted a video of herself doing so); and Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese democracy heroine.

Ai speaks to us by video. He says, “Last year, for no clear reason, the government arrested me for 81 days, and still today I am not allowed to receive journalists or to get on the Internet or to do any kind of writing. I cannot travel. I can only stay in Beijing.”

Toward the end of his remarks, he talks about the ten years he spent in New York: This led him to “understand my responsibility, and what art and creativity can do.”

About her award, Sharif says, “I know I do not deserve it,” which suggests to me she does, in fact, deserve it. She then says, “I represent the struggle of 11 million back home” (which must refer to the women of Saudi Arabia).

Like Ai, Aung San Suu Kyi speaks by video. She reflects on her friendship with Havel. Incidentally, he nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize, which she won (1991). He also nominated Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese political prisoner, for the prize, and he too won it (in 2010). Many times nominated himself, Havel never won.

One sweet thing about ASSK’s video? At one point, a pet bird, I’m pretty sure, chirps in the background.

(Last month, I wrote about ASSK, her Nobel prize, and her recent reemergence in Burmese politics. To see this piece, go here.)

‐The next morning, I go down for breakfast in the Grand Hotel, helping myself to pieces of thin, flat chocolate with cereal flakes stuck on them. Breakfast of champions. Then I’m off to Telemark, for a Norwegian adventure — about which I will tell you tomorrow.

To get Jay Nordlinger’s new book, Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World, go here.