Monday, January 5, 2009

Èxit campanya de resposta a The Economist - moltes gràcies

La campanya de Resposta Pública a The Economist, impulsada per l'ACP i l'Espai Hayek, a partir del text del Professor Carles Boix, ha estat un èxit, amb més de 5.500 adhesions. Moltes gràcies a tots pel vostre suport.

Adjuntem el comunicat final de campanya.

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Benvolgut/da adherit/da,

després d'haver aconseguit més de 5.500 signatures (+1.500 a través del Facebook) d'adhesió a la resposta pública a la revista The Economist pel seu article esbiaixat sobre la realitat catalana ("How much is enough?"), hem procedit a enviar una carta amb el text que coneixes, tot informant-los de la campanya que hem fet, a l'editor en cap de The Economist, John Mickelwaith, el cap de l'edició americana de The Economist, Adrian Woolbridge, i al periodista responsable de l'informe, Michael Reid. Pots trobar el text de la carta, en anglès, una mica més a baix.

Et volem donar les gràcies pel teu suport i expressar-te que et tindrem informat de qualsevol impacte que la nostra iniciativa hagi pogut generar o generi en endavant. Així mateix, voldríem compartir amb tu el nostre anhel per aconseguir en el futur una via per donar una resposta més sistemàtica a les tergiversacions, biaixos o pures falsetats que es difonen quasi sistemàticament sobre el nostre país.

Moltes gràcies pel teu suport

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Dear Sir,

I write to you in response to the special report "The Economist" published on Spain last November. The report does an excellent good job in describing the overall political history of Spain as well as its economic structure and the problems it faces in the near future. Unfortunately, its section on regional politics ("How much is enough?") makes a considerable number of factual mistakes.

Although I very much like "The Economist" and eagerly await for it every Friday, I must confess that in the last years I have been always surprised to notice how poorly informed and generally biased your reports are on the Catalan question in Spain. In particular, the report of november does not reflect well the current debates about language and education (it just describes the terribly distorted point of view of some Madrid intellectuals and media). It does not do a good job either in examining the fundamental financial issues at stake and its overall implications in terms of both political fairness and economic growth.

I naturally sent a short letter to the "The Economist" which appeared, in an abbreviated form, in your newspaper. I am grateful for that.

Still, out of a sense of concern and fairness, I decided to write a slightly longer letter to explain in a precise (and empirically supported) manner why the reports errs on so many counts. After writing that second letter and making it public, several Catalan organizations, such as the Catalan Association of Professionals (an association of young professional who work in the business and banking sector) and Espai Hayek (a group of pro-free-market economists) supported my effort. With their help we have collected over 5,500 signatures of support. You can access the list of supporters in the following two websites:

http://www.respostaeconomist.cat (about 4,300 signatures) and

http://apps.facebook.com/causes/153770 (about 1,400 signatures)

I have attached the letter to this email as well. And I have cc'ed both the chief editor of "The Economist" and the author of the report, Michael Reid. Let me point that I have already been in touch with Mr. Reid and that he showed great responsiveness in responding some of my emails.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Yours truly,

Carles Boix

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