THE RAPE OF SIBERIA

I was deeply touched by your recent article on Siberia and the Lena Delta Biosphere Reserve in Yakutia [COVER STORY, Sept. 4]. How I wish the members of the 104th Congress could show as much restraint and responsibility concerning the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge! In contradiction of the intent of the 1980 Alaska Land Conservation Act, budget resolutions are being considered by this Congress that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas leases. There are better ways to balance the budget. While there is still time to make a difference, I hope we will all strongly encourage our legislators to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and wilderness areas in the Lower 48 from oil and gas development. Let's not allow a few people in Congress who are out of touch with the American people's commitment to wild places and wild things to take actions that we would soon regret. JOHN DENVER Aspen, Colorado

What's going on in Siberia is the same thing that's occurring in the rain forests of South America and the fragile coral reefs of the Caribbean. These areas have all fallen prey to greed. If we continue exploiting the earth, we will bring about our own demise. NAGA YALLA Edgewater, New Jersey aol: NYalla

Your Siberia cover headline questions, THE RAPE OF SIBERIA...CAN IT BE SAVED BY CAPITALISM? That's like asking Can Alaska be saved by oil spills? Opening a part of Siberia that has not already been wounded by nuclear and other environmental horrors under communism to capitalist ventures in oil, forestry and so on will only make a bad situation worse. I suggest that the only kind of capitalism that should be allowed in Siberia is operations to clean up those areas damaged by hazardous dumping, and maybe a squadron of wrecking balls for Norilsk. Vice President Gore should turn his attention from timber raping in Siberia to timber growing in America. DANIEL L. PEARLMAN Alexandria, Virginia

Thank you for your chilling depiction of environmental disaster in Siberia. As a student in Magadan, Siberia, I witnessed leaky oil refineries, toxic-waste dumps at the headwaters of rivers, scrapyards of twisted metal and swaths of clear-cut land: grim testimony to the failure of the Soviet system to care for Siberia's fragile ecosystem. Industrial society seems to lead inexorably to devastation of the earth's northern lands. On America's own arctic frontier, the U.S. Congress stands poised to allow oil exploration of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, something a soon-to-be-released Interior Department report says would cause "irreparable harm." There is a monster lurking in the frigid reaches of the north, and it is not Frankenstein's. It is our legacy of environmental destruction. GEOFFREY RAPP Cambridge, Massachusetts

Where is the proof that communism destroyed the forests of Siberia, rather than greed, which is the real suspect? If destruction was caused by greed, wouldn't that mean capitalism? You should have mentioned how the U.S. is destroying its own forests and that U.S.-based companies are rushing into the former Soviet Union to exploit its natural resources. TRACY BRIEN San Francisco Via E-mail

Your article proved what German philosopher Martin Heidegger already knew when he decided to sit out the "great" ideological debates of World War II. There is only one ideology, and that is technology, which holds that we should allocate the greatest number of goods to the largest number of people. Capitalism and socialism merely have different theories on how best to achieve that goal, but they never question the goal. The only alternative to the ideology of technology that has given us Siberia and Bhopal, Chernobyl and Three Mile Island is ecology. JORDI ROS Beverly Hills, California

Your cover story "The Rape of Siberia" is a disappointment. You seem to have compassion for the soil but not for the lives of the hundreds of thousands of Estonians, Latvians, Ukrainians and members of other nations who perished in Siberia during Soviet rule. AINA O. NUCHO Baltimore, Maryland

By the time our Republicans in Congress get through, Alaska and the rest of the U.S. will look the same as Borneo and Siberia. Then when bottom-line greed is finished, there will be enough unemployed, motivated citizens to homestead all those square miles and spend their lives pulling up stumps. EUGENE W. FOOTE Ocean Grove, New Jersey

If Gore and his environmentalists and ecologists wish to help the Siberians in their advocacy of our form of government, they would do well to form corporations of their own that would enter the field of resource development in competition with the multinational oil companies. Then cost-benefit ratios would determine the viability of their preservation efforts. Or, alternatively, they could merge with the oil companies to form a really strong development team. JOSEPH A. GUERRIERI Newark, Delaware

The photo of the unmarked wooden crosses in the northern tundra reminded me of my youth. In 1945, my physician father and I were taken by the Soviet NKVD (more recently the KGB) from our home in Budapest, Hungary, and, though innocent, accused of espionage. (After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the charges were dropped.) We were shipped to the labor camps (Gulag) of the dreaded Kolyma region of northeastern Siberia, where I spent eight years between life and death. At one point, I weighed 85 lbs., and only a miracle saved me from joining those wooden crosses. My father's body is buried there, and it is quite possible that one of those crosses marks his grave. GEORGE Z. BIEN Fairfax, Virginia

PLAYING AUTO CATCH UP

Perhaps if Ford, and corporate America in general, spent less time on public relations [BUSINESS, Sept. 4] and more time on quietly getting things done in a steady and unwavering pursuit of excellence, it would not be forced to play catch up so often. How appropriate that Ford's best-selling car is named after the bull. IAN M. HODGE Rochester, New York

AMERICAN HISTORY STANDARDS?

In "Why America shouldn't kill cultural Funding" [COVER STORY, Aug. 7], Robert Hughes admits the proposed American History Standards developed by UCLA have "too much pluribus, not enough unum" and are flawed in analyzing the Aztecs, the Japanese in World War II and the cold war. Well, the UCLA standards are also biased when examining European explorers, British North America, the American Revolution, the westward expansion, business enterprise, economic growth, reconstruction, immigrants, ethnic groups, Woodrow Wilson, Henry Cabot Lodge, Harry Truman, the Supreme Court, domestic policy since 1945, feminism, the 1960s, "diversity," cultural trends, religious values and myriad other themes. The standards contain hundreds of examples of misrepresentation, distortion and bias. Prizewinning historian Forrest McDonald wrote that there are nine errors on one page alone that examines the American Revolution. The standards cannot be fixed, as Hughes suggests, "with editorial goodwill," because they are built on an unstable foundation of bias and misrepresentation. Unfortunately, Hughes has apparently neither talked to opponents of UCLA 's proposed American History Standards nor read much about them. Instead, his article consists mostly of name calling. Moreover, he hasn't bothered to do his homework, or he would have written that the U.S. Senate condemned the standards 99 to 1. Hughes declares that the standards are the focus of "conservative ire"; however, liberals such as Ted Kennedy, Carol Moseley-Braun and Paul Wellstone joined in condemning the standards, suggesting they are the locus of "liberal ire" as well. JOHN FONTE, Executive Director Committee to Review National Standards American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research Washington

BOOSTING THE BREED

I am highly offended by the way you described the otter hound [CHRONICLES, Sept. 4]. They are very intelligent creatures with an excellent sense of smell. I own a 90-lb. female otter hound. Just because otter hounds are not as easy to train as some other dogs does not mean the breed is not as good. I know a four-year-old child who is a better judge of dogs than you are. KATHRYN COFFMAN, age 11 Solon, Ohio

WEBZINES COMING UP ROSES

Your recent article "Hot 'Zines on the Web" [TECHNOLOGY, Sept. 4] overstated the "cheap and easy" aspect of producing quality content on the Internet. While tossing text up on the Net is substantially less expensive than traditional publishing, electronic publications that intrigue users and keep them tuning in require a significant investment of time and money. We should know--we produce WORD magazine with a staff of 12 full-time people (and a number of freelance employees) who log many hours to edit, write, design and sell advertising. There are also the costs associated with the engineering and administrative infrastructure. Cheap? SCOTT BAXTER President and CEO, ICon International New York City Via E-Mail

When a 'zine starts to pay and large profits are made, it becomes a magazine! Why can't Time Warner and other corporate jerks stay out of a thriving hobby that is based on writer-reader trust? I'm going to make sure that in my 'zine people know what's happening, and I'm going to tell them to stay away from corporate 'zines that are more interested in making a buck than preserving the public's last breath of free expression. DAVE NOWAK, age 16 Editor, Potato Blight Baltimore, Maryland

CORRECTION

The chart "Nowhere to go but Down?," which ranked currently traded stocks in terms of their first-day trading gains [CHRONICLES, Sept. 4], did not consistently reflect Boston Chicken's 2-for-1 stock split. The adjusted IPO price and first-day close price should have been $10 and $24.25, respectively. Thus Boston Chicken was not among highflyers whose recent stock price was below it's first-day closing price.