ALAN FRANKLIN writes: Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, Zondervan (Bible) Publishers, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, a major part of The Sky Network in Britain, internet gambling operations and much, much else - he also publishes Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven" books, has more interesting links. His pal and associate Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who has a big investment in News Corp, owner of Fox News, has funded projects of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf - the man behind the Islamic Tower of Triumph by Ground Zero. We wonder if the fearless commentators of Fox News will reveal this?

I always laugh when people think the Fox channel is somehow "right wing." It's whatever wing Murdoch decrees it to be and his past history, from his early days in Australia, show that he backs whatever politicians suit his interests at the time. In Britain he backed Conservative Maggie Thatcher then, when he saw the writing on the wall, switched his mega-circulation newspapers to support for Tony Blair's Socialists, thus ushering in the most destructive period in recent British history.

Murdoch has a Chinese wife with good contacts in the Chinese Communist leadership. He is one of the few- maybe the only- foreigners allowed to build a huge house in Peking's Forbidden City, where Christians have been arrested for distributing Bibles. Murdoch - a keen supporter of the Communist regime, has lectured at a Peking university for the up and coming generation of Chinese leaders, with some of whom he has business links.

He's a keen promoter of Rick Warren, whose "Christianity-lite" books have done so much damage to American church life, and also screens the rubbish broadcast by Robert Schuller. Warren was given a whole week on Fox News to plug his books, under the heading "Can Rick Warren save the world?" I put out a sarcastic comment- still in our archives if you look, headed:"Can Rick and Rupert save the world? Er, no."

Together with South West Radio Ministries of Oklahoma I once did an expose of Warren, Murdoch and the tosh they put out. We looked at the Zondervan website, which closed with an exhortation to holy living. Murdoch runs the firm. Next we looked at the Sun and News of the World newspapers in Britain - two of the world's sleaziest rags, full of pictures of semi naked women, suggestive stories, horoscopes and garbage of all kinds. They are headed by Murdoch and his son, James.

They have been getting big in internet gambling via the News Corporation. On the Sky network in Britain and elsewhere, they provide a platform for scores of porn, homosexual and psychic channels. All good business, just like printing Bibles.

When Rupert thought Hilary Clinton might be the next president, he held a non-publicised fundraiser for her in the New York studios of Fox. In Australia he regularly switched his backing of politicians.

So I was unsurprised to find this headline on Yahoo News:

News Corp’s number-two shareholder funded ‘terror mosque’ planner

Rupert Murdoch with Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. We wonder if the prince knows Murdoch has a Jewish mother? Jews are not allowed to set foot in Saudi Arabia.

This is an abbreviated version of the story, with the political correctness edited out: The opponents of the proposed Cordoba Initiative Islamic center planned for Lower Manhattan say its principal planner, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is connected to terrorism. "The imam has been tied to some shady characters," Fox Business Channel's Eric Bolling recently said, "so should we worry that terror dollars could be funding the project?" Blogger Pamela Geller, a leader of those who denounce the mosque, has noted Rauf's involvement with a Malaysian peace group that funded the group that organized the Gaza flotilla under the headline, "Ground Zero Imam Rauf's 'Charity' Funded Genocide Mission."

On the"Daily Show," Jon Stewart tied Fox News to al-Qaida by connecting Fox News parent News Corp's second-largest shareholder, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, to the Carlyle Group, which has done business with the bin Laden family, "one of whose sons — obviously I'm not going to say which one — may be anti-American." But Stewart didn't need to take all those steps to make the connection: Al-Waleed has directly funded Rauf's projects to the tune of more than $300,000. If Fox newscasters can suggest "terror dollars" are sluicing into the Islamic center's coffers via "shady characters," then are Al-Waleed, and News Corp. leader Rupert Murdoch, by the same logic, also terror stooges?

Indeed, as none other than Rupert Murdoch's New York Post reported last May, the Kingdom Foundation, al-Waleed's personal charity, has donated a total of $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a leadership and networking project sponsored jointly by two of Rauf's organizations, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative. Al-Waleed owns a 7 percent, $2.3 billion stake in News Corporation. Likewise, News Corporation owns a 9 percent, $70 million stake — purchased in February — in Rotana, Al-Waleed's Saudi media conglomerate. Put another way: Rupert Murdoch and Fox News are in business, to the tune of billions of dollars, with one of the "Terror Mosque Imam's" principal patrons.

As Geller notes on her blog, Al-Waleed donated $500,000 to the Council on American-Islamic Relations — which has been repeatedly denounced on Fox News's air by Geller and others as a terror group — in 2002. Indeed, Rauf's "numerous ties to CAIR" alone have been cited by the mosque's opponents as a justification for imputing terrorist sympathies to him, yet few people seem to be asking whether Murdoch's extensive multi-billion business collaboration with the man who funds both Rauf and CAIR merits investigation or concern.

Other beneficiaries of Al-Waleed's largess include the Islamic Development Bank, a project designed to "foster the economic development and social progress of [Muslims] in accordance with the principles of Shari'ah." The IDB funds the construction of mosques around the world, and has been implicated by frequent Fox News guest Stephen Schwartz in an attempt to spread radical Wahhabism (a fundamentalist branch of Islam) throughout the United States.

Fox News had no comment. An email to Al-Waleed's Kingdom Holdings was not returned.