Beer too expensive? Toke up for change

Written by Joshua Grenzsund

Thursday, 27 March 2008

This is a global issue. People don’t treat it with the level of concern that they regard climate change, economic collapse and war; however the rising price of beer may very well be interconnected with all of these. Additionally, with the skyrocketing prices of key beer ingredients like hops, barley and malt, we are realizing that we can no longer be dependent on an international brewing materials market. A possible solution? Domestic, local, organic, renewable marijuana. Beer is itself a key ingredient in social life and national identity, but with the price of hops increasing from averages of $3-$5 a pound a year ago to as much as $35-$40 a pound in early 2008, breweries and pubs from England to the United States to Amsterdam must face the reality that they may not be able to survive. Barley costs have also increased about 30 percent over the last year and combined with the increase in distribution costs because of the all-time high price of oil, craft brewers and pubs have to face tough decisions on whether they can salvage very small profit margins — usually about 9 percent for brewers — by cutting back in other areas, or if they have to raise prices at the tap. Average price increases of one to two dollars a six pack may in fact drive beer drinkers toward larger brands like Anheuser-Busch, Coors and Femsa who have the clout to buy up hops supplies and the deep pockets to shave a profit margin but expand market share at the same time. All these factors reveal that though many brands and craft brewers manufacture a regional image or a national identity, they do so only through international trade of hops and grains. Your favorite import that demonstrates your refined tastes may very well get that hoppy bite from Tasmania or Washington state in the US. Likewise, your favorite US domestic may depend on imported hops varieties to give it its characteristic bite and flourish. Add to this the concern of all the pesticides used to cultivate and all the fossil fuels used to transport beer materials to breweries and then package and ship it to the consumer. Some even argue that higher beer prices are in part due to the amount of corn diverted to ethanol production, which then pits brewers, bakers and livestock growers against each other for the shrinking supply of grains. Enter marijuana. Many people, worldwide already enjoy pot as one of the top four recreational substances — the others being alcohol, nicotine and caffeine — and there are several reasons why it is poised to come to the rescue of beer connoisseurs who long for the aroma of a pungent flower. Hops, the beer ingredient that gives it its bitterness, high points and aroma, is actually the flower of the hop plant, and its pungent aroma itself can be as enticingly intoxicating as that of the flowering bud of a marijuana plant. For the beer drinker who enjoys a bit of hoppy skunkiness in his or her drink, the shift to some dank bud will probably be an easy one. Despite the huge and obvious drawback to marijuana’s illicit status in many places around the globe, that it is so popular and available does make it an economical replacement for craft beer. If you spend $30 to get a bit of a buzz on one night a week at the bar, you may be saving a lot of green if you’d just switch to weed. Many times you can get 3.5 grams (1/8 of an ouce) of fairly locally-grown pot for around $50 — or less if you make the right connection — and instead of blowing it all in a night, you can smoke up your crew and yourself for a couple days, or even a week if you’re stingy, for that half-a-Benjamin. Also, if you do shop around, you can be sure to support local organic farming — or grow a plant or two yourself — and keep your money in the local economy, thereby cutting back on all sorts of problems associated with international import-export and petroleum-based transportation. Sure, it is illegal, and many people would argue that such black market activity contributes to an unsafe society, reckless behavior and, in this case, undermines the craft brewing industry that already faces huge hurdles in the current economy. However, this change should be seriously considered. We’re at the point where our old ways have led us to two terms with a President whose policies and actions have led us to many of our current troubles with the economy, foreign policy and the environment. Yes, a loss of craft brewers would be a devastating shock to national and regional identity, but a change to more marijuana recreation in its place could change illicit drug laws — remember the US prohibition of 1920-1933? — and bring about a growth in legal craft farmers. You may have to wait until November to vote on the president, but you vote every day with your dollar, and where you choose to spend it can change the world.

Spring Break for the Soldiers: A Four Day Break from War

Written by Josh Grenzsund

Thursday, 20 March 2008

Doha, the capital of Qatar, where those serving in the Middle East can go for a four-day spring break. It's the time of year for college students to relax (or get wasted) over spring break. World Writer Joshua Grenzsund discusses the difference between a spring break from college and a spring break from serving in the Middle East. College is stressful, no doubt about it, and spring break is a chance to escape the normal pressure of school for a few days. Some of us will either sleep for a week straight to make up for lost time, or drink and screw and save all the sleeping for when class is back in session. But this year, the few days away from lectures and exams has me thinking about those serving in our combat zones and how badly they may need a break from the business of killing and staying alive. Not long after Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom were rolling across Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon recognized the need to give people a few days’ break in order to keep them motivated, productive and—in many cases—sane. They selected the United States base As-Sayliyah near Doha in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar to serve as their year-round Central Command spring break. Most troops on a 12- to 18-month tour of duty in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa get at least one four-day rest-and-recuperation pass. Many of them elect to spend it on a military-sponsored trip to Qatar rather than stay locally in their post or a nearby base. I made one of those trips myself, in October 2004, on break from duty with the Army in Afghanistan, though I got out altogether in 2005. For me, the choice to spend two miserable days of traveling in the back of a C-130—one each way from Bagram, Afghanistan to Doha, Qatar—was hinged on two key factors. First, there would be no chance of running into unstable colleagues still carrying their weapons and live ammo, and more importantly, there was a 100 percent chance I would be able to get my hands on a real beer—three beers a day to be exact. Despite these factors, you have to consider nothing in the military is done without its extra layers of bureaucratic fun-sucking. And in the words of one Lieutenant Colonel who made notes of his trip to Qatar, once you arrive, you have to expect to “be processed like beef cattle at the slaughterhouse and move from one room to the next and one briefing to the next, 'Do this, don't do that, watch out for this, look out for that.'” The adventures with Vorpal Bunny, his human counterpart and others provide good examples of how the average person gets cycled through the on-post fast food shops and swimming pool, and the off-post chaperoned trips to play golf, go dune busting, walk thought the mall with an indoor ice rink, and for some reason go to see a 20 foot statue of a clam pearl. I saw the clam statue myself, but the whole point of this trip was not so much tour Qatari culture, but to be re-oriented to the shocking concept that there was a peaceful and functioning modern world out there, outside the combat zones. CW2 Bert Stover wrote a blog for The Washington Post and in one of his postings he described sitting down to watch TV in civilian clothes, drinking a beer and how “memories of life in the U.S. came back instantly. I forgot everything about being in Iraq: the flying, the heat, the people, all of it.” When I got my pass to Qatar, I had been in Afghanistan for nearly six months without a day off, working 14-hour days in old Soviet buildings with dust blowing through cracks in the walls, or in mud Afghan huts with rotted corrugated tin ceilings, making decisions about people’s lives and probable deaths each day. My pass had been revoked once before, and I was aching to escape for even just a couple hours of mindless solitude. My moment of personal escape to the reassurance of the westernized world came on my first full day in Qatar when I found an ex-pat sponsor to take me out on the town. It was the second full day of Ramadan, and there had been mild threats towards U.S. personnel, so many of the usual outings had been canceled. Instead of going to the dunes or the Qatari markets he took me to an ordinary western-style grocery store. I spent the better part of an hour walking up and down the clean brightly-lit and colorfully-stocked isles, just touching things, buying things, lost in the marvelous experience of not carrying a gun, knowing nobody’s life was in the balance, and just shopping. A guy blogging on Going Down Range wrote about other startlingly pleasant experiences that civilians don’t know how to fully appreciate, like when he could “sleep in without the fear of a rocket attack, use real toilets and take a nice long hot shower.” Coconut Commando posted a thorough account of his trip to Qatar on his blog. Though he recognized the artificiality of the oasis of U.S. fast food in the desert, he also pointed out the genuine contrast of being on R&R and life in a combat zone that most service members take notice of. “I sat on a berm for about two hours, and just listened to the wind blow," he wrote. "I know it’s the simple things in life that have the most impact.” In the end, there can really be no comparison between taking a spring break from school and a four day pass from war. If anything though, looking at what we give to and expect from our service members—especially on this fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq—it helps put our academic lives in perspective. As university students, we take our few days of getting wasted and then get back to the task of earning a degree. The guy blogging at Going Down Range, however, sums up the difference of responsibility and expectations. “It was nice to relax for a few days,” he wrote. “Now it is back to the task to helping Afghanistan to join the 21st century.”

Forget Tibet: the bullshit factor

Written by Joshua Grenzsund

Monday, 10 March 2008

Earlier this month Icelandic musician Björk grabbed headlines for herself and for the world’s pet cause as she shouted " Tibet! Tibet!" after her song “Declare Independence” at a concert in Shanghai, China, earlier ths month. No doubt many will applaud her move as the most meaningful and provocative statement by a musician since Ireland's Sinéad O'Connor had her way with the Pope’s picture in 1992. However, the more interesting story lies not in what human rights injustices may be exposed in Tibet, but rather in what can be overlooked and ignored while people chant, cheer, and hang flags on their front porches for that sparsely populated region of Asia. “Freedom” is a rallying cry for just about any political cause you might choose to pick up. You might want to “free Iraq” with 140,000 US troops and a five-year occupation during “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Or you may prefer a slightly more justified cause and support a “free Afghanistan” with NATO and “Operation Enduring Freedom,” now nearing its seventh full year. But if you think military intervention is, well, passé and overall just bad for karma, then you’re probably one of the many who want to “Free Tibet” with bumper stickers and prayer flags. The problem with all of these freedom movements is the heavy bullshit factor that each of their supporters try to overlook in order to foreground the feel-good factor. The Western movement to liberate Tibet, a.k.a. the Xizang Autonomous Region of China, tops the list. Sure, there are plenty of feel good reasons to support a “free Tibet.” China did conduct a violent take-over the country, ending in 1959; Tibetans’ traditional lifestyle and religion are increasingly threatened in their own homeland; and they do subscribe to a belief system that condemns violence and sounds like it could really help people live overall harmonious and peaceful lives. But a layman’s way into the underlying bullshit here is actually through Showtime’ program "Bullshit" in which the co-hosts Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller examine the Dalai Lama’s back story. They claim the Dalai Lama's apparent benevolence doesn't address the reality of a traditionally class-based society in which the peasant class in Tibet was little more than a population of slave labor. China’s official position mirrors this. Penn and Teller do concede, however, that Communist China’s policies may not be much better for the two million Tibetans who still live there. So while this image of peaceful enlightenment draws hordes of international supporters for “freedom” in Tibet, the truth behind Tibet’s domestic tradition of governance is second to the duplicity of the Tibetan resistance with the United State’s CIA — an organization certainly known not for peaceful humanitarianism but rather its government-sanctioned “subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements.” Several books and declassified documents detail a history of the CIA helping the Dalai Lama’s retreat into exile and Tibetan fighters training with the CIA in Colorado. Few Hollywood stars and average US peaceniks would slap a CIA sticker next to their Tibet paraphernalia, so this inconvenient history is largely ignored in favor of the robes, smiles and karmic promises. But aside from situational awareness, none of that is even worth dwelling on in the discussion of why US liberals’ ego-stroking love affair with Tibet’s ostensible freedom movement is problematic. While the world demonstrates their humanistic awareness by cheering for Tibet, sitting on that autonomous region’s northern border is another separatist situation — much more significant and almost entirely invisible to the world’s do-gooders. Uighurstan — a.k.a. Xinjiang, a.k.a. East Turkestan — makes up a full 20% of China’s land mass and has a native Uighur population of about seven million, which is about three times that of Tibet’s native Tibetan population. They also face displacement by Han Chinese and a loss of traditional lifestyle, language and religion. However, where Tibet was annexed in 1959, Uighurstan was fully absorbed in 1949. Where Tibet has mountains and the headwaters to China’s great rivers, Uighurstan has minerals, fossil fuels and access to the markets and resources of Russia and the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia. In short, Uighurstan is under a “harsh illegal colonial rule” that would be a wet dream for peace and freedom activists to rally around — except you've never heard about it. Oh, and one more thing: Uighurs are traditionally Muslim and as a result of their geographical location the separatist activities of their independence movement organizations tend to be tied to and lumped with what the US generally characterizes as unsavory “Islamic extremists.” Not many tie-dye Euro-Americans tend to pick up Islam as a fashion statement the way they do with Buddhism. But there's a more basic reason for the lack of attention. In the December 2002 Congressional Research Service report titled “China ’s Relations with Central Asian States and Problems with Terrorism” the CRS summed up the main reason you never heard of Uighurstan is because the “Uighur community lacks a single charismatic leader like Tibet’s Dalai Lama.” No superstar, no superstar attention. But you may hear more of them in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics. As Tibet had hoped to send athletes, Beijing authorities are instead expecting more terrorists or, as it were, freedom fighters from Uighurstan, as they claim to have recently stopped a Uighur “terror plot targeting the Beijing Olympics.” So after all this, iyou can see that all this attention on freeing Tibet pretty much takes up all our karmic energy and small bills for colorful flags — there’s nothing left for supporting a free Uighrustan, much less anything left for looking a little closer to home for people who have had their land forcibly occupied and their lifestyles, languages and religions nearly erased. If, however, you do genuinely care about these humanitarian concerns and are not just concerned with massaging your ego and throwing up a façade of peace and compassion to fit into co-opted neo-liberal norms, think about the dozens of Native American Nations in North America, the war, violence, 500 years of injustice; put your energy and karma into a "Free America" campaign. Otherwise, change your “hippie” into just plain “hypocrite” and keep your fashion politics to yourself.

Why ELF should stop burning

More power in the spark of an idea than a lit match

In my opinion | Duceré Useré Cycleré

By: Josh Grenzsund

Posted: 3/12/08

They're back - back in black. Just when many believed that we had seen the last of Earth Liberation Front-style arsons, last week four luxury "eco-friendly" homes near Seattle, valued at about $2 million each, were set ablaze.

Several news agencies reported that ELF had struck again, and Seattle's KING-5 news station showed footage of a white sheet with red spray paint spelling out a "green" message - "Built Green? Nope black! McMansions in RCDs r not green. ELF." RCD stands for rural cluster development, and these unoccupied homes were built in forested land in what some consider a sensitive groundwater area.

Despite the calling card, the FBI is withholding judgment on who may be responsible. ELF, often referred to as a "leaderless resistance movement," can hardly be held responsible for this arson, because it doesn't really exist. And as far as membership to the non-organization, all you have to do to is claim that you're acting in the name of the ELF cause and you're in. It may take the FBI 10 years to find you and give you your full membership package of being declared a domestic terrorist, but the point is that these are the actions of irresponsible individuals.

But even aside from the headline drama of ELF vs. FBI (and whether 21 and passionate can outwit 41 and nearing a pension), the real issue here is determining the best methodologies for affecting environmental awareness. Arson, as a methodology, cannot affect political and corporate movement toward environmental conservation and sustainability because the application of destructive means bolsters those who resist environmentalism, alienates non-violent activists, fractures the would-be environmental movement and triggers overwhelming punitive legal and legislative responses.

No doubt the key component to choosing arson over more low-key activism is the shock value and the certainty of drawing international press coverage to the cause. Arson does get coverage, but it is completely counter-productive attention. Not only does arson associate eco-activism and conservationist movements with destructive radicalism; it's lazy, unimaginative and is easily used by law enforcement, lobbyists and congress as an excuse to obstruct legitimate pro-active environmental moves, as well as justification for undermining all US citizens' constitutional rights to speech, assembly and redress of grievances as guaranteed in the First Amendment.

Violent, destructive eco-activists have long held to a mantra of paradox, that to destroy is to preserve. But really, it's time to embrace a new paradox: To develop is to conserve. The new green has to be profitable and widely marketed. If all our products are developed in line with sustainable and eco-friendly principles, then these principles will dominate our lifestyle. On the other hand, if you torch to protest, you gain nothing but a fleeting ego trip and a prison sentence.

Business and development are ignorant organs that will orient themselves to wherever market demand will make money. This weakness is our strength, if we can find the innovation and insight to take advantage of it. If you want corporate practice to reflect your ideals of eco-sustainability, then create products, practices, markets and demands in a positive sense. Instead of burning luxury homes, spend the money for spray paint and torching materials on a few dozen eco-friendly light bulbs, send out a press release (on recycled paper) and donate those bulbs to someone who has been using traditional bulbs and thereby using more electricity from generation facilities - in short, encourage less impact constructively.

The maligned tokenism of arson is something eco-activists have to really talk one another out of. Torching of SUVs in the early '00s did not bring hybrid and smaller vehicles onto the road - they were encouraged by general environmental concerns, gas prices and, more importantly, it is market demand that now drives the growth in hybrid and electric vehicle development. Some will say that this approach is selling out to "the man," but in fact is actually a much more satisfying and intellectual manipulation of "the man" because "he" becomes the tool of your view for the future, rather than a hegemonic "Big Brother" of some dystopian apocalypse.

On the other hand, eco-motivated arsons are actually the very grist that the Department of Justice and the U.S. Congress need to justify their dystopian moves, like the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 which amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and classifies as terrorism any "use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs." The recent arson clearly qualifies, and probably meets USA PATRIOT Act federal sentencing guidelines for terrorist arson as well.

Under the broadest terms of that open-ended 2007 act, even persuasive force or written or spoken rhetoric in order to promote social beliefs could be subject to prosecution under domestic terrorism law. This very column could be violating federal terrorism law right now.

Clearly eco-arsonists have not thought this through. To derail the threats to both our environment and to our liberty we have to recycle the idea of destructive resistance and move forward with intellectual, critical, marketable and legal methodologies.

jgrenzsund@dailyemerald.com

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© Copyright 2008 Oregon Daily Emerald

Campus' pet trees have deep roots at University

Campus' pet trees have deep roots at University

In my opinion | Duceré Useré Cycleré

By: Josh Grenzsund

Posted: 3/5/08

Last week I attended a lecture on campus, in which guest professor Elizabeth Heckendorn Wood spoke about "trees as profit, trees as pets." It's easy enough for us, living in a logging region, to understand how trees translate into money, but a concept of trees as pets is really quite easily dismissed.

That is, until you start to look around and see individual trees that have symbolic value attached to them. A pet tree isn't just the one outside the window that gives you shade and something pleasing to look at and would not really consider using as timber or fuel. It is the tree that you planted to commemorate the birth of a child, the memorial tree dedicated to veterans, or the oldest tree in the area that is a living artifact, older than the first European settlements in the region.

We take these pets for granted and rarely consider the significance of how they function in our social environment. These days we are starting to think of trees in terms of carbon sequestration and as a way to offset greenhouse gas emissions, but the trees that we plant and keep around our homes, schools and places of work characterize who we think we are and what history we think we have. In a way we use trees to create social and mnemonic value and form a decidedly human environment with one of the most basic symbols of what we think defines nature.

"The babies always get the attention."

The University of Oregon has long recognized the social and symbolic value of trees. From the University's beginnings in 1876, trees on campus have formed an integral part of selling the aesthetics here. In 2001 the University integrated an official Campus Tree Plan into its planning processes, and all decisions that may impact campus trees now have to pass through a flow chart to ensure that the aesthetic, environmental and historical aspects of trees are considered.

According to the Campus Tree Plan, students initiated the first tree planting program in 1883, starting the tradition of trees at the University and laying the foundation for its current reputation. Though most of those trees did not survive through the next year, in 1884 the University janitor was commissioned to plant and care for more trees, and as of 2001, the plan claims that the "big-leaf maple near the southeast corner of Deady Hall is the sole survivor of this planting effort."

This is an example of the official "significant trees" on the UO campus. It is an interesting symbiotic relationship that this tree takes on a new significance just by having social meaning attached to it, and once that story is attached to it, we look at it differently. Many of you will walk over to Deady Hall in the coming weeks to see if that 1884 maple is flushing green with its 124th Oregon spring. You'll stand under it and wonder about the janitor who cared for it all those years ago, finding it interesting that he was paid only for the trees that survived. You'll imagine the world back then, before electricity, before autos, before Oregon's eastern neighbors were afforded statehood, back in a world as changed as that barren pasture that is now a 4000-tree arboretum. You may even reach out and touch its bark to see if an essence of that history and time between may be hanging there like moss.

This maple is an example of our pet tress because it is possible for us to identify this individual tree and create a social space and social significance for it. To value it in dollars or board feet or BTUs it could produce if used for firewood would be considered by many as blasphemy, tantamount to chopping and burning that unnamed janitor, the University's history, or even our entire sense of identity as an institution with a past. But it is not the only pet tree on campus.

Others include the Douglas Fir "Moon tree" south of the EMU, germinated from a seed that orbited our moon 53 times on the Apollo 14 mission; the English Oaks on the Memorial Quad; the Pin Oaks from 13th and University to Lawrence Hall; and the Douglas Fir, which line the walkway from Deady Hall to Kincaid Street.

If any of these were cut down, it would have significance far beyond just nondescript wood fiber destined for a lumber or pulp mill - it would be a death of social significance. But it is not so much what would be lost if we cut these trees. The whole point of examining our pet trees is to then ask why and how it is so easy to disregard any intrinsic significance of non-pet trees that make up our national forests, our building materials, and our economy.

jgrenzsund@dailyemerald.com

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© Copyright 2008 Oregon Daily Emerald

Rap in Russia: The new standard for democracy?

Written by Joshua Grenzsund

Tuesday, 04 March 2008

Russia's music scene is seeing a wave of influence from the United States' rap music industry. World Writer Joshua Grenzsund explores the influence rap music has on bringing ideas of freedom and democracy to Russia. This past November, Antonio Maria Costa — director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime — criticized musician Amy Winehouse for contributing to international drug problems by glamorizing drugs. If the U.N. has the time and insight to focus on the influence of Western music in the world, they should look at how it actually serves their ostensible interests of freedom and democracy. The next music-related announcement they make should have something to do with the inroads that music paves into even the most stolid tyrannical regimes — like rap in Russia. There may not be democracy or free elections in Russia thanks to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his hordes of 40-somethings who have a stranglehold on the neo-Soviet government, but a growing number of young artists and everyday youth are taking up a decidedly Western medium — rap music. Many in this new generation were not even born in the U.S.S.R., which broke up in 1991, and though they engage rap and hip-hop in a decidedly Russian style, the genre has within it the roots of social change that even Putin might not be able to control. Radical social change at the hands of Western music has happened in Russia before. When Soviet counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s gravitated toward Western-style music like Motown, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix; the music not only influenced inspired Russian musicians and trends in style, but was also considered as having played a decisive role in the Soviet collapse. The circulation of Western thought — along with albums, clothing and concert ticket sales — amplified the capitalist black market and eventually helped undermine communist ideology. At the same time the social force of rock music peaked in the decidedly analog world of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s' rap music from the United States was making its first inroads behind the Iron Curtain. With the proliferation of the Internet and digital music production capabilities in the late ‘90s and into the ‘00s, the crosscurrent of hip-hop culture between Russia and the West has seen both an explosion of United States artists like 50 Cent and Beyoncé performing to sold-out shows in Russia while professional and amateur Russian acts produce their own singles and albums. This popularity is apparent not only in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, but far into the oblasts, republics and autonomous regions. The recently published Encyclopedia of Rap and Hip Hop Culture places the recognizable inauguration of hip hop in New York City in the early 1970s. Zulu Nation is credited with being the most important original hip-hop crew and the impetus for its formation was one of exchanging weapons for lyrics and violence for a competition of musical skill. Although hip hop has since been fractured among political rap, apolitical escapist rap and club and gangster hip hop that glamorizes violence and drugs, all of these have within them the particular force of artistic momentum that finds its inspiration and rhythm of expression in a freedom and individuality that is corrosive to hegemonic authority. Within Russia there are thousands of hip hop and rap groups who upload new tracks and singles to file sharing sites and YouTube as well as forums, Web sites and Internet radio channels dedicated to Russian rap and hip hop. This upsurge represents a third wave of Russian rap — the latest in a drive to create and share that has been going on for about two decades. Whether rap can really be Russian is similar to the debate in the U.S. as to whether white rappers are anything more than posers and thieves of cultural currency. But forum entries on Hip-Hip.ru going as far back as 2000 discuss this question and many fans and artists conclude that the freedom embodied by rap music is something very central to their projects of social expression and hope to be a part of shaping Russia in the 21st century. The biggest names in Russian hip hop emulate a US west coast style of rap and are very commercialized. Timati — a international transplant who has moved back and forth between Moscow and Los Angeles — and Seryoga epitomize the mixture of gangster rap and tracks meant for club play. Timati’s hit “V Klube” ("In the Club") is a current big hit, as is Seryoga’s “King Ring ” which is being used in the video game "Grand Theft Auto 4." Other examples of this style of hip hop are Legalize and De Maar. The more hardcore gangster rap with darker overtones and more overt references to drugs, violence and guns are represented by more independent groups whose recordings and videos are generally less produced, though this tough image fits with Russian machismo. Some of the more notable artists are Kasta, Yujnie Krai, Mafyo and Triada. Generally, more Russian instrumentation and visual elements are integrated by these artists, despite still solidly imitating U.S. rap. Other notable subgenres include lighthearted rap epitomized by Семён and Brate Ulibaete, party rap that moves into more poetic sentiments by acts like Rayon Moey Mechty, St1m, UG, Detsl and other work by Seryoga. A last, but very important aspect to Russian rap is the small and fairly hard-to-find representation of women rap artists. Rena, Gidroponka and Amira are three of them. A review of this breadth of Russian rap reveals both the ways in which rap has infiltrated every level of Russian social life and the ways in which it may help bring about future social change. The appetite and capacity for rap and western ideals, in all its various forms, is something that Minister Putin and President-elect Dmitry Medvedev will have to work to keep contained within their vision for Russia’s identity and future. If they don’t, it will help catalyze new change in Putin’s Russia as much as it did in Soviet Russia. In the mean time, if Western nations want to embrace Russia in democracy, all they have to do is tune in to the newest Russian rap.