Occasional Insomnia

I haven't been a true insomniac in years, but last night the combination of spicy food late at night, Philip Gourevitch's book on Rwanda and worry about my upcoming Spring Break travel combined to wake me up at 4 this morning.
Big news that I didn't witness: Yesterday, at my school, many students left chanting and went off to rally at City Hall. It felt momentous to be sitting in my office, advising a student on what courses to take in the Fall and to be interrupted by the sound of slogans outside in the hallway. This morning, I've read a couple of stories about the nationwide demonstrations. Apparently the one in NY was very diverse, but presided over by a bunch of politicians.
Meanwhile the Whitehouse is at the center of several scandals. There's this one and the gathering focus of Fitzgerald's investigation, which as Kossacks predicted last Summer, is indeed leading to an overall discussion of the lies that led to war.
There are various discussions about this in the blogosphere. This one is funny. This post on Dkos is interesting.
The question remains, is this one finally going to have an impact? What do you think, and how do you measure it?

Maybe all this isn't enough to keep a person up at night, but thinking about the Rwandan genocide is. It began twelve years ago on April 7, 1994 and continued until nearly 1 million people were killed within slightly more than three months. Given what's going on in the world today, I have to agree with Gerald Caplan who writes in the "Globe and Mail" that we have learned nothing from these events. The next book I plan to read about this genocide is Linda Malvern's "Conspiracy to Murder," the product of ten years of research on the planning of the genocide and the complicity of the UN and the US to cover it up once it began. For a more academic discussion of genocide in general, see this review in the London Review of Books.
Now, I'm going back to bed.