With the court-ordered release of Hosni Mubarak and Muslim Brotherhood leaders either in jail or underground, the restoration of the "Mubarak-ist" military dictatorship is complete. And for some it sounds the death knell for the Arab Spring. It is a blatant counterrevolution.

A Surprise? Not really. Most of the justices and military brass are Mubarak appointees. The old rulers are coming back with vengeance, and a river of blood is flowing. Der Spiegel reported: "the paramedics in front of the main Cairo morgue in Sainhum are adamant that the facility cannot handle any more corpses. The cold rooms, the regular rooms and the courtyard, they say, are all full of bodies. There are even bodies on the streets outside, forming an eerie queue, lying in rows of three, some shrouded in white sheet or black body bags and others in open coffins." Thousands, not hundreds, were killed, most of them shot in the head or chest. Security forces even killed thirty-six prisoners in their custody.

The interim prime minister Hazem el-Beblawi, with his mouth fuming, is asking for the total destruction of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The "Supreme Guide" of the Muslim Brotherhood was arrested. Mohamed Badie was reportedly captured in an apartment in the eastern Cairo district of Nasr City. His arrest was confirmed by MB's English-language twitter account. Bardie's son, Ammar, 38, was shot dead while protesting.

The Egyption "liberals" and "leftists" who support the coup have turned into "secular fascists". Writing in Counterpunch, Joseph Massad, professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, says they have "proved to be less open, less tolerant (they are xenophobic towards Palestinians, and increasingly Syrians and Iraqis are taking on fascist proportions), and certainly less democratic than the 'Islamic fascists'". In the case of Egypt, a secular fascist is a liberal democrat who lost to the Islamists in the elections.

El-Sissi's military dictatorship is even darker than Mubarak's. Under the latter, repression of Muslim Brotherhood was never total. It was allowed room to operate, to contest elections and to have seats in parliament. However, el-Sissi aims at destroying MB as a political force.

Ardently supporting the counterrevolution are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, feudal monarchies mortally afraid of the Arab Spring, which threatens their legitimacy.

It is a lineup of all the reactionaries.

What is happening in Egypt, a country with a population of 82.5 million, may be the most important development so far in the 21st century. How would the West react?

Interim Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy has already warned foreign countries, especially those providing aid, not to interfere in what he calls Egypt's internal affairs.

Consider the United States, the main sponsor of the Egyptian military. Secretary of State John Kerry said in Pakistan on August 1, that the Egyptian military was "restoring democracy". He asserted that "The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all of whom were afraid of a descent into chaos, into violence."

Even though he had to retract those words, they represented his true thoughts.

President Obama said the US "strongly condemns" what is taking place. But he adamantly refused to call the overthrow of Egypt's first democratically elected president a coup so as to avoid cutting off military aid. Washington has sought to maintain an official position of neutrality. But that is no longer tenable.

The EU has only regrets and is quite helpless.

The only way out is to dismantle the Egyptian military: a task only the Egyptian people can accomplish. It will be a long hard struggle.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/zhaojinglun.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

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