“A Dear Price” (1/21) was an excellent piece, the best I have read in recent times about the ironic double dealings and atrocities of the Royal Shell Oil Corp. I was hoping to find the article at your Web site. How disappointing that it wasn’t.

The argument that the exhibition is sponsored by the Shell Oil Foundation and not Shell Nigeria is hollow and laughable at best. Would the same person have used the same argument in the case of Hitler—who after all did not physically commit the atrocities at the Nazi concentration camps—that he should not be blamed for all the atrocities committed against the European Jews? I hope not.

That the Smithsonian could have accepted the funds is despicable and a big shame. Would the Smithsonian have accepted money from the Columbian drug lords because it had a problem finding sponsorships due to lack of publicity?

What the Smithsonian did was to accept blood money. Thousands of unknowing Nigerians were sent to early graves because of the diseases they were exposed to by the nonchalant attitudes of executives at Royal Dutch Shell, the mismanagement of the environment (made uninhabitable for many generations to come by Shell), and the bastardization of the local economy. Ken Saro-Wiwa paid the ultimate price fighting against Shell’s mismanagement of the environment, which hasn’t changed up ’til today.

Please, can you make that article available online so that I can e-mail it to some of my friends who might find it interesting?

Greenbelt, Md.