coalition of political groups openly charge that Port Said was a premeditated slaughter

HERE.

Why was this a self-destructive act of cataclysmic proportions?

1. The Egyptian public will not stand for the massacre of innocent teenaged football fans.

2. The film makes it quite obvious that this was not a random act of hooliganism gone too far.

3. Many people had been slipping into a kind of sad political resignation recently. And now this. Everyone is now completely re-energized.

Someone I know who is deeply involved with the Revolution mentioned today that she’s been reading again about the first three years of the French Revolution and learning from it. I doubt she’s alone, and this evidence of a long view is not good news for certain people.

It’s generally a mistake in politics to open up new groups of committed enemies who won’t stand for your survival. I started feeling Mubarak might be in some trouble, for the first time, after Khaled Said was beaten to death in front of many witnesses, the autopsy gave a farcical cause of death, and the protestors on the streets were no longer just Islamists and professional activists, but all kinds of people who normally are very apolitical. That was too far for even them to accept.

I think this has similar potential. As Sandmonkey points out, football was almost the last source of pleasure in the country, and now that’s gone too. And it’s gone because of a stadium massacre of 70+ young people, captured on film. This has the potential to grow even bigger than the Khaled Said incident.