"The Saudi Fox" is a nickname given to one Al-Waleed bin Talal -- a member of the Saudi Royal Family and direct descendant of founder Ibn Saud; but Bin Talal is so nicknamed because he is known to own upwards of seven percent of News Corporation, the company which owns Fox News, making him the second largest individual shareholder in that somewhat tangled corporate entity. Bin Talal, with a net worth of some $17 billion, has been seen to have the close confidence of News Corp's biggest figure, Rupert Murdoch -- who in turn, somewhat incestuously, has himself procured a 19 percent stake in bin Talal's Rotana Group, a massive entertainment conglomerate in the Arab sphere of influence.

Interestingly, the Saudi Fox has been quoted commenting that "A strong American Government is not good for us," and reportedly bragged on several occasions of having persuaded Murdoch to change angles of Fox News coverage. Indeed, even one anti Obama website has raised bin Talal's influence over Fox News as a reason to.... well, to impeach Obama, but you get the picture.

Bin Talal made news after the September 11 attacks by giving New York City $10 million -- which was promptly rejected by then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani because it came with a call by bib Talal for America to "re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause"; bin Talal credited the result to "Jewish pressures." The Saudi Fox has been criticized as well for describing Palestinians killed in Israeli West Bank operations as "martyrs," which is in keeping with the policy of the Saudi government to deem them as such, and to compensate their families, towards which Al-Waleed donated £30.5 million of his own money. There are those who would build up bin Talal's influence to be perhaps more than it is, but again there are those who would dismiss or ignore the alacrity with which he moves between the Western world of slick rhetoric and the Saudi kingdom's brutal religious repression of its people. In either view, it must be noted that the Saudi Fox maintains immense wealth and power, and seems to have chosen to immerse himself amongst some rather unsavory allies.

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