[MUSIC] Franz Ferdinand, "What You Waiting For?"

The compilation album Q Covered Best of 86/06 has a few good tracks, like Nick Cave's cover of Pulp's "Disco 2000," Corinne Bailey Rae's version of Björk's "Venus As A Boy," the Editors' take on REM's "Orange Crush," and The Magic Numbers' take on The Smiths' "There Is a Light That Will Never Go Out" manages to overcome its Morrissey inheritance in becoming minimalist and sublime. (The Flaming Lips' cover of "Can't Get You Out of My Head" and Travis' "... Baby One More Time" work only as light comedy, as an in-joke of sorts by po-faced rockers.)

Me, my favourite track on the album is the first one, Franz Ferdinand's cover of Gwen Stefani's "What You Waiting For?". Franz Ferdinand and Gwen Stefani can, with only a bit of shoehorning, be qualified as prominent members of the New Wave revival. Stefani's strengths lie on the dance end of that spectrum, in forms ancestral to modern electronica, a poppish and danceable sort of Ladytron, and the original "What You Waiting For?" reflects this. Franz Ferdinand lies at the other end of the spectrum, a direct inheritor of New Wave and indie rock with two decades' worth of accumulated studio polish and electronic stylings, and their guitar-driven version reflects their style quite nicely. The interpolation of a couple of lines of Billy Idol's "White Wedding" (It's a nice day for a white wedding/it's a nice day to start again") doesn't hurt, either.

[BRIEF NOTE] The Horn of Africa at War

The Head Heeb has more on the impending Ethiopian-Somalian war that I wrote about yesterday. What's going on?

First, in brief. Ethiopia supports the autonomy of Somaliland, at least in part because Somaliland provides Ethiopian commerce with another sea outlet that isn't Eritrea, also in part because an autonomous Somaliland nicely undercuts pan-Somali nationalism. (Formerly French Djibouti, populated in part by ethnic Somalis, is another outlet.) Yebo Gogo notes that Somalian Islamists' desire to fulfill the dream of a Greater Somalia has led them to support not only Somali separatists in the eastern Ogaden region that was the subject of the Ogaden War of 1977-1978, but to help Oromo separatists in Ethiopia's central region of Oromia. The territroy of Oromia, not incidentally, completely envelops Addis Ababa. This leaves aside the unhelpful aid lent by Eritrea to Somalia's Islamists, Sudan's potential role as a troublemaker for either side, or the potential for wider involvement now that the Islamic council has apparently declared a jihad against Christian-dominated Ethiopia.

It goes without saying that this situation is very bad. All of the potential players have entirely legitimate reasons to wage war. How could they not, pitted against neighbouring countries that would like to clientelize or disintegrate them entirely? With no one involved interested in compromise and no one outside committed to controlling the situation, things almost seem to be destined to escape mortal control. Yay.