The Tale of Dark Lord Stephen Harper and his Tar Sands Kingdom

In what is the perfect illustration of post-millenial politics, combining hacktivism with social media, Black Flood and the Yes Men coordinated a beautiful awareness campaign-slash-prank that paints Stephen Harper as the tyrannical Middle Earth evil spirit Sauron, and his cursed black land of Mordor the Alberta Tar Sands.

I wonder if that makes Jack Layton Frodo Baggins?

Top photo: The Peace Tower in Stephen Harper's Ottawa. Bottom photo: The Dark Tower in Sauron's Mordor.

Coincidence?

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Excerpt from rabble.ca:

Travellers at Terminal 3 in the Toronto airport were astounded Tuesday morning to see Gandalf the Grey and several hobbits march their handcuffed prisoner Stephen Harper, dressed as the evil lord Sauron, into a Syncrude Ltd. recruiting meeting. They demanded that Synacrude take him back to Mordor aka the Alberta tar sands, "the hell on earth that he created."

The performance was the culmination of a series of media reports that director Peter Jackson is shooting scenes from "The Hobbit" film in the tar sands. In a press release issued today, a troupe of Toronto activists calling themselves Black Flood, working alongside the infamous pranksters of The Yes Lab, confirmed their role in the events for "the purpose of stirring up some hot and bubbly controversy on the Alberta tar sands."

It all started on Saturday when Stop Mordor appeared on Facebook demanding that the Alberta government stop the plans to use the Alberta tar sands as Mordor in the new Hobbit film. At the same time there were some tweets claiming sightings of Elijah Wood, reprising his role as Frodo Baggins, in Fort McMurray.
Using their extensive networks, the group starting pushing the news through social media. Naomi Klein, posted the first tweet

"Apex of disaster capitalism: Hobbit being filmed in Alberta, with tar sands as Mordor. G8 way to save $ on sets." Naomi's tweet was followed in minutes by famed environmental activist Bill McKibben: "Hobbits in hot tar? It sure looks like mordor. Say it ain't so." Twitter was abuzz.