Is Faisal a Villain or Statesman?

To the Editors:

Your choice of King Faisal as Man of the Year was indeed an excess of poor judgment. If the world (and particularly the press) should have learned anything about the Arab mentality, it is that publicity and recognition only encourage the Arabs' violence and blackmail.

From Sirhan to Munich, from hijacking of planes to highway robbery at the gas pumps, the more notoriety they receive, the more innocent blood they shed and the harder their bargaining position on oil becomes.

I doubt that your choice even sits well with the millions of poor, underprivileged Arabs who watch while Faisal leaves them behind on their camels as he speeds away with his entourage of Cadillacs and Lear jets.

TIME fell short of its usual perception in selecting a villain at a time when the world is in such desperate need of a few heroes.

Feme Kron

Chicago

While peace in the Middle East will not necessarily lead to a price reduction of oil, it would enormously reduce the obstacles to consumer-producer cooperation. A far more important consideration is that the alternative to progress toward peace is the likelihood, if not the inevitability, of a new war. The consequences could be nuclear, and might well involve the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

OPEC's exercise of its new power for political as well as economic purposes is a strategy learned from the West, including the U.S. The wonder is that it has been so long in coming and that it has been exercised (so far) with comparative restraint. It is encouraging that the producer governments have been urging a cooperative solution of the "recycling" problem. In contrast, the tendency far too prevalent in this country has been to emphasize an adversary relationship, with an undertone of threat. For a great nation comparatively well off, this is as unbecoming as it is ill-considered and dangerous.

Given the restraint, moral leadership and huge economic leverage of King Faisal stressed in your article, one is led to ask if Israeli leaders might not find in him the key to security and peace with the Arabs. If his terms are in fact no more than an implementation of Security Council Resolution 242, which Israel signed in 1967 along with Egypt, Jordan, the U.S.S.R. and the U.S., then evacuation of the territories occupied in the 1967 war could be the basis for Arab recognition of the right of Israel to exist behind recognized frontiers, and for a stable peace. This has been the Egyptian position explicitly affirmed since 1971. It would seem to be an opportunity Israel cannot afford this time to ignore.

Richard H. Nolte, Executive Director

Institute of Current World Affairs

New York City

An Arabist, the writer was appointed Ambassador to Egypt in 1967. His service was interrupted, however, because diplomatic relations were severed as a result of the Six-Day War.

Never before in history has such an immense transfer of wealth and power come about so abruptly as in the past two years. For the first time in memory our very life-styles are affected by the decisions of a handful of foreign rulers. King Faisal is definitely the Man of the Year.

Steve Shelton

Atlanta

Faisal has become the most important Arab leader in modern times. He symbolizes the glorious era of the Arabs when the legendary Saladin, Haroun al-Rashid and Tariq ben Ziyad were so linked with the history of the West.

David T. Mizrahi

Editor, MidEast Report

New York City

You've got to be kidding! Bum of the Year would be more like it. I just got a double whammy in the mail today--my electricity and home fuel bills.

George Chebba

Bangor, Me.

I cannot comprehend the moral basis upon which you select Man of the Year. Here is a person who blatantly manipulated economies and crises throughout the world. In a society where morals are consistently sold out to the highest bidder, you rank with the best of the offenders.

Pamela Lechtman

Ventura, Calif.

Your Man of the Year selection is as popular as the Pardon of the Year.

Gabe Gibbons

Poughkeepsie, N. Y.

Congratulations on a Man of the Year selection whose political and social immorality parallels only Watergate.

Carolyn Walker

Sacramento, Calif.

So, King Faisal was your choice this year because he met your criterion as "the person who has most significantly affected--for good or ill--the course of events."

In that case, who got the award in 1939? Adolf Hitler?

Peter Calhoun

St. Paul

Yes (TIME, Jan. 2,1939).

Investigating the CIA

President Ford's panel to investigate the CIA's involvement in illegal domestic spying is more "blue chip" than "blue ribbon" [Jan. 13].

Vice President Rockefeller has been a hawk on issues like Viet Nam and nuclear testing. Ronald Reagan's record is even more closely associated with imperialistic ventures. All eight men are part of the power structure that the CIA was trying to protect. The committee contains no representatives of the peace movement, no women and no members of ethnic minorities.

Don Luce, Executive Director

Clergy and Laity Concerned

New York City

In light of the exposure of the CIA'S illegal investigations, I can only surmise that now that America is no longer the land of the free, it had better be the home of the brave.

Mrs. John C. Stewart

Weston, Conn.

The Allure of Nonsense

I read with both pleasure and sadness the review of Charles Berlitz's The Bermuda Triangle [Jan. 6]. I read it with pleasure because it was cool, clear and well reasoned. I read it with sadness because it will only serve to stimulate sales of the book.

The vast mass of humanity is, alas, attracted by nonsense. To point out that it is nonsense is merely to reassure people. They will roll in the dung heap all the more merrily for knowing that it is the real thing. The Roman philosopher Seneca said, "Man is a reasoning animal." What evidence he had for that assertion no one knows; certainly none has surfaced in the 19 centuries since his time.

To be sure, a few individual human beings are reasoning animals. You can tell who they are by the fact that they are denounced by everyone else every time they open their mouths. As an example, count the denunciations that will rain down upon the head of your rational reviewer.

Isaac Asimov

New York City

The writer is a prolific author of science fiction and nonfiction. One of the most popular of his 158 volumes: Foundation Trilogy.

Your article does a great disservice to the questions posed by the Bermuda phenomenon and related unexplained phenomena, and to the many intelligent individuals who are studying such questions. Some of the Berlitz speculations may seem like "farfetched science fiction," but men on the moon and atomic power were once farfetched science fiction too. In any case, it is doubtful that the Coast Guard would willingly admit the existence of something beyond their knowledge or their ability to investigate.

William Norris

Schenectady, N. Y.

The $5 Million Question

Your article regarding "out-of-sight settlements" against insurance companies [Dec. 30] used as one example of injury judgments that may be getting out of hand the case involving Mutual of Omaha and Michael Egan.

Mutual of Omaha has paid out during the past ten years 25.6% more of its earned-premium income on individual and family-health insurance than the combined averages of the next 24 companies in the field. During 1974, Mutual of Omaha issued more than 9,000 benefit checks to disabled policyowners every work day. Of the millions of dollars we pay in income benefits each year, 95% goes to people who are not in the hospital. The only time a legal question is involved is when it appears that someone can return to work and therefore doesn't qualify for benefits. We had several reasons to believe that Egan could return to work.

Because we feel that the $5 million in punitive damages awarded by the jury went beyond the basic question of whether Egan did or did not qualify to receive disability income, the case is being appealed.

C. Meade Chamberlin, Vice President

Mutual of Omaha

Omaha

Rehabilitating Jonah

I found your article on the Bible [Dec. 30] extremely interesting, but felt that Jonah and his whale came in for an undeserved beating. During the past 100 years, many animals have become extinct. Why should there not have been, all those years ago, a whale vast enough to be able to swallow a man alive? Perhaps some day we will find the remains of such a creature, and then poor Jonah will be vindicated.

The April 4, 1896, Literary Digest carried a story about a whale that demolished a harpoon boat in the Mediterranean. Two men were lost, but one was found alive in the whale's belly a day and a half after it was killed. James Bartley is said to have lived with no aftereffects, except that his skin had been tanned by his host's gastric juices.

R.S. Horne

Titusville, N.J.

John Denver Was a Hit

In the Economy & Business section [Dec. 9] reference was made to the Oct. 12 appearance of John Denver at the University of Tennessee. You erred on two points. There were 12,075 seats rather than 14,000 mentioned in the article, and every available seat was sold.

Contrary to your information, we found that Denver's universal appeal ensured a sellout. The reviews and the volume of compliments following the show marked it as one of the best we ever produced.

Kevin Majkut, Campus Entertainment

Board, University of Tennessee

Knoxville

Christmas Lessons

You had an article concerning a Houston department store offering a wide variety of unique Christmas gifts, e.g., a day's guitar lessons with Jose Feliciano for a mere $14,500 [Nov. 25]. Were there any takers?

Raymond S. Schreckengaust

Camp Hill Pa.

Sakowitz sold one day with Peter Duchin at $3,750 and eight three-day broncobusting lessons at $230 apiece.

A Fly and Freud

"His interest in the drug was scientific, not sensual," you say referring to Sigmund Freud and his interest in cocaine [Jan. 6]. That is correct.

I knew my uncle well. (He was my mother's brother and he married my father's sister.) Freud's attitudes and actions have often been distorted by his detractors, the ignorant and the prejudiced. In fact, his character was impeccable, unimpeachable. He was warm, sympathetic, compassionate.

After college graduation in 1912, I traveled to Karlsbad In Austria to visit him. We lunched together in a small restaurant. I noted a fly walking on the tablecloth and attempted to swat it. He turned to me and said quietly, "Let the fly enjoy its promenade on the high plateau." How typical of his considerate attitude toward all things great and small.

Edward L. Bernays

Cambridge, Mass.

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