In which the pond lobs a variety of balls out of court ...

There is no Jehovah, there is Yahweh, there is no Allah, and sob, there isn't even a genuine spaghetti monster, the aliens of Roswell are suspect, while the E-meter is a fraudulent use of electricity ... and having ensured that this blog and its author would be caned, or more likely jailed in Indonesia,  there is the ABC Law Report asking Is Indonesian pluralism under threat?

It is, of course, under more than threat, it's in dire peril, especially in the area of gay and women's rights, and blasphemy laws and basic common sense and courtesy to minorities, including the Chinese ...

If the pond had to fault the program, it's because it failed to mention one of the key reasons for the shift towards fundamentalism, spelled out at The Atlantic here ...

Since 1980, Saudi Arabia has devoted millions of dollars to exporting its strict brand of Islam, Salafism, to historically tolerant and diverse Indonesia. It has built more than 150 mosques (albeit in a country that has about 800,000), a huge free university in Jakarta, and several Arabic language institutes; supplied more than 100 boarding schools with books and teachers (albeit in a country estimated to have between 13,000 and 30,000 boarding schools); brought in preachers and teachers; and disbursed thousands of scholarships for graduate study in Saudi Arabia. All this adds up to a deep network of Saudi influence. 
 “The advent of Salafism in Indonesia is part of Saudi Arabia’s global project to spread its brand of Islam throughout the Muslim world,” said Din Wahid, an expert on Indonesian Salafism at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (UIN) in Jakarta.

At the heart of this Wahhabism is a completely Saudi-funded university in South Jakarta, the Institute for the Study of Islam and Arabic (LIPIA):

LIPIA’s doors opened in 1980. Its ostensible purpose is to spread the Arabic language, and there’s not a word of the country’s official language, Bahasa Indonesia, on its campus—not a bathroom sign, not a library book. Tuition at LIPIA is free for all its 3,500 students. Music is considered bid’ah, an unnecessary innovation, and is prohibited, along with television and loud laughter. Men and women do not interact; classes of male students attend live lectures on one floor while female students watch the same lecture, live-streamed, on a separate floor.

The Donald's powerful stand on this sort of issue?

Bow and scrape and kneel ...

And how does all this connect to fundamentalist jihadist Margaret Court?

Why did that line in the splash, "Tennis, free speech not connected" irritate the pond so?

Well there are obvious examples, such as Indian tennis player Sania Mirza daring to exercise her right to free speech, and then coping a fatwa ...

Issued by Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui, a leading cleric with the little-known Sunni Ulema Board, the religious order demanded that Mirza, a practicing Muslim, stop wearing "indecent" clothes to play tennis. Instead of standard-issue t-shirts and skirts, the board ruled, she should wear long tunics and headscarves, like a group of female Iranian badminton players. Or else. (Vice here).

If anyone can be bothered, tennis falls under this sort of fundamentalist ruling, which purported to cover sports of the soccer, volley-ball, table-tennis, badminton kind:

1 – They should be free of gambling, i.e., betting between the players. 
2 – They should not form an obstacle to the obligatory remembrance of Allaah, or to prayer, or to any obligatory act of worship, such as honouring one’s parents. 
3 – They should not take up a lot of the player’s time, let alone taking up all of his time or causing him to be known among the people for that, or becoming his job, because then there is the fear that the aayah (interpretation of the meaning) “Who took their religion as an amusement and play, and the life of the world deceived them. So this Day We shall forget them” [al-A’raaf 7:51] may become applicable to him. The last condition does not have a set limit, but should be referred to what is customary among the Muslims; whatever they regard as excessive is not allowed. A person should set a limit for the time spent playing and for the time spent in serious pursuits; if (the time devoted to playing) is half or one-third or one-quarter, then this is too much. And Allaah knows best. 
 Shaykh Khaalid al-Maajid (Faculty Member, College of Sharee’ah, Imaam Muhammad ibn Sa’ood Islamic University). (here).

That university is apparently based in Riyadh and spends a considerable amount of time pumping out fundamentalist bigotry online, no doubt with the help of Saudi oil dollars ...

Which brings the pond back to the fundamentalist Margaret Court issuing her jihadist fatwa against Alan Joyce ...

It gives the pond a chance to welcome sport and reptile journalist Margie McDonald to the pond - the pond usually conducts its own fatwa on all forms of sport by ignoring it ... but this attempt to serve up a sanitised Court was too much to bear ...

Uh huh, local hero? So now we're trading off on movies?

It's a process whereby bigotry and barking mad fundamentalist followers of religion are sanitised and cleansed and made holy, and tennis somehow gets separated from 'freedom of speech', which somehow earns itself inverted commas, because freedom of speech isn't the same as 'freedom of speech' ... and as a result, Albury ends up sounding suspiciously like Tamworth ...

Well Court had her say, and then she got slammed for her intolerance, so both sides exercised their freedom of speech ...

These days gay professional tennis players don't have to hide their homosexuality ... and tennis has itself been a long march, in terms of what women were allowed to wear, how much they should be paid, and so on and endlessly on in the struggle for equality.

It took considerable bravery for gay tennis stars to come out - count the number of AFL players who have come out - and don't get the pond started on the challenges that Althea Gibson faced in pursuing her career and winning the French Open, Greg Hunt her here. Not because she was gay ... in her case she was black ...

Let's just say that the freedom to speak, the freedom to be, and sport, are intimately connected ... have always been, and always will be ...

So don't give the pond all the usual hagiographic tripe about how wonderful Court was, as if that's some kind of absolution for what Court has become, and the way the fatwa-issuing fundamentalist Court currently is ...

People can feel honoured to get an award in an event named after a stupid fundamentalist. That's their right and privilege ...but how could anyone read those last few lines and not laugh loudly in a way designed to agitate Islamic fundamentalists?

“We should be able to talk freely. I’ve got nothing against people. I even get letters from atheists and they say they believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I get them from all kinds of people ... they’re not Christians, I don’t think it’s anything to do with that.”

Here's the thing. If you talk freely about how gays are going to hell, likely they're inclined to talk freely, perhaps suggesting that you might go to hell instead ...

And of course it's to do with fundamentalist Christianity you goose, and other fundamentalist religions, including but not limited to fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist Judaism ...

It isn't so hard to understand. A few old fashioned goat and camel herders scribbled down some delusional lines a few thousand years ago, and some barking mad people have been howling at the moon ever since ...

Never mind, being able to talk freely is a two-way street, and having a few unkind words about Margaret Court is an amiable way to spend a Wednesday ...

It's a pleasant distraction from other corrupt fundamentalists out and about conducting a war on the media ... media which has been exploring the deep and disturbing corruption currently on parade ...

Here at the ABC:

"Ian, don't take this lying down. You and Saraya, you're smarter than that. You know her well. Go and have a fucking coffee with her [Senator Hanson] or something, mate. Seriously, go and remind her of a few fucking home truths." "Away from Mr Ashby," Mr Nelson said. "Yeah."

Here at the ABC:

Senator Hanson: "Who knows Bill's name? No-one, we always kept it very quiet. 

She continues: Who knows that he paid the money upfront for the office?" 

Mr Nelson: "I have no idea." 

Senator Hanson: "There was only the four of us who knew. It was tight-knit."

Hmm, the pond has thus far managed to link tennis, fundamentalist Islamics and Xians, spaghetti, and gays and blacks and women's rights, and Pauline Hanson and the ABC.

There must be some way to get in coal ...

Mr Modi signalled that India will move forward on its climate agenda even if the US exits the Paris agreement, saying politicians have "absolutely no right" to put in jeopardy the environment for future generations. He praised Mrs Merkel's experience and Germany's economic example to India. 
 "We are meant for each other," Mr Modi said. (Fairfax, here).

Hmm, that doesn't quite do it. It's good that India will go on pursuing renewable energy sources and attempting to reduce reliance on traditional fuels such as coal, thereby placing the economics of projects like Adani in profound jeopardy.

But that's familiar news.

Did some form of epic stupidity turn up this day that could set up the running of a Rowe cartoon?

Oh wait ...

The Turnbull government will test support for coal in Parliament by introducing changes that would allow the green bank to invest in carbon capture and storage technology if it cuts pollution by at least half.
Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said the Clean Energy Finance Corporation [CEFC] would have its mandate expanded so it could back fossil fuel power plants that include the technology, sometimes described as "clean coal".

"This is proven technology – technology that should be made to work here in Australia to reduce emissions and help us meet our Paris targets," Mr Frydenberg said. He said there were 17 successful projects across the globe, storing about 30 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. To put that in perspective, Australian annual emissions alone are about 550 million tonnes...
... The technology depends on local geology, and has proven prohibitively expensive. A $2.4 billion carbon capture and storage flagship program announced by the Rudd government in 2009 yielded little and was gradually wound back before being discontinued under the Coalition. (More nonsense at Fairfax here).

This is proven technology?

Yep, that'll do it, and as always there's more Rowe here ...