Saturday, June 24, 2006; A19

Little History of Unifying

Your paper reported that Chinese President Hu Jintao "has begun to play down China's long-standing vow to recover" Taiwan by force if necessary ["China Easing Its Stance On Taiwan; Tolerance Grows For Status Quo," news story, June 15]. That makes this a good time for Americans to stop referring to China's annexation of Taiwan, as your article does, by the misnomer of "reunification."

The Taiwanese people originally came from a different ethnic group than the Chinese and lived independently of China for more than 1,000 years. Indeed, the Taiwanese were conquered by the Dutch before they were ever conquered by the Chinese, and when Chinese rule finally came, it lasted only 200 years before it was replaced by Japanese rule more than 100 years ago.

China has less historical claim on Taiwan than Russia has on Ukraine -- the historic birthplace of Russian civilization -- and Americans would never endorse Russian annexation of Ukraine by referring to it as "reunification."

-- Richard Joffe

New York

The headline on the obituary for Gyorgy Ligeti ["Austrian Composer," June 13] was both insensitive and misleading.

While he was an Austrian citizen and died in Vienna, Ligeti was a quintessentially Hungarian composer. He was born in the historically Hungarian region of Transylvania; his music teachers, both in Transylvania and in Budapest, were Hungarian; and the majority of his vocal and choral music is in Hungarian. He kept "Gyorgy" as his first name and didn't change it to George or Georg.

In future years, his name will appear next to other great 20th-century Hungarian composers -- Bartok, Kodaly, Dohnanyi, Weiner. Would the headline writer label William Walton "an Italian composer" just because he lived and died in Italy, or Lord Byron "a Greek poet" just because he died in Greece?

-- Zoltan Bagdy

Germantown

The comment by Jean Sammon ("The proper name of the tax is the estate tax . . . ") in the June 17 Free For All deserves a reply. IRS Form 706 for 2005 -- United States Estate (and Generation Skipping Transfer) Tax Return -- includes the following lines:

3b: State death tax deduction. 13: Credit for foreign death taxes.

So please, regardless of the name at the top of Form 706, let's call it what it is -- a death tax.

-- Donna Berriman

Falls Church

The June 18 front-page article "Fighting to Remain Engulfed in Junk" belongs in the Health section (not front page), and you owe an apology for putting Sam Shipkovitz in the pillory.

By extension you have pilloried the rest of us who "feel compelled to acquire stuff and are unable to organize it and incapable of throwing anything away."

You should be celebrating all of us who are incapable of unsubscribing to The Post because of our "mental illness, brain dysfunction and obsessive-compulsive disorders."

-- Robert Braxton

Fairfax

Would you please tell me why all editors in newspapers across America feel the need to use condescending, patronizing brackets [when quoting someone, filling in words not directly attributable to the person's quote]?

In "Arizona Race Tests a Hard Line on Immigration" [news story, June 12], you quote Democratic challenger Harry Mitchell, discussing Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth, as saying, "I think he's out of touch with his district on [immigration policy]." Presumably, "[immigration policy]" substitutes for "it."

The entire article discusses immigration policy. Do you think your readers are so stupid they won't understand "it"?

-- Nathan F. Weiner

New York

Post editors, where are your blue pencils? "Eek," I screamed as I read in Sunday Source, "Daylight eeks its way past 9 p.m. . . ."

-- Lynne Heneson

Washington