We've seen how bad things have been going in Afghanistan because the media has shifted away from Iraq. Well, the shift will move back to Iraq after today:

A series of attacks in Baghdad and other cities across Iraq on Monday struck police and army checkpoints, as well as markets, a mayor’s office and a textile factory. The violence appeared to be a coordinated rebuttal of assertions by Iraqi and American commanders that Al Qaeda in Iraq and other extremist groups had suffered debilitating blows in recent weeks.

The attacks, which killed at least 95 people and wounded hundreds more, occurred amid a protracted dispute over the results of the country’s election more than two months ago. Even as the violence continued to unfold across the country through the day, officials blamed the political impasse for creating a security vacuum that extremists hoped to exploit. There were no immediate claims of responsibility.

One of Iraq’s two vice presidents, Adel Abdul Mahdi, called for speeding the formation of a new government to prevent “any attempt by terrorist gangs to use the circumstances in the country to hurt the Iraqi people and the armed forces.”

A member of the departing Parliament’s security committee, Bahaa al-Araji, pointedly blamed the security forces for unclear loyalties and “the arrogance that inflicted the generals” because of improved security that, he emphasized, the American military had achieved and Iraq’s military was squandering. “The top military leaders are preoccupied with the political situation,” he said in a telephone interview. “Each is affiliated to a party or a bloc, and some have participated in the election, and so their priority is no longer security.”

The attacks began as the nightly curfew lifted in Baghdad at 5 a.m. and continued relentlessly through the day. Gunmen, dressed as municipal street cleaners, ambushed 10 police and army checkpoints across the city, killing as many as 9 soldiers and officers and wounding two dozen, according to officials...read on

Reuters says:

The attacks reaffirmed the continuing vigor of the insurgency after government forces dealt a series of blows to al Qaeda's network in recent weeks, including an April raid that killed Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Overall violence in Iraq has subsided sharply since the height of sectarian warfare in 2006-07, but the March election has fueled tensions again.

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James Verini at the Daily Beast notices something we've been tracking here at C&L too: Neo-Nazis and far-right extremists are not only recruiting more openly, they're being much more public in their full-on expressions of racism, nativism, and xenophobia. Unlike David Duke, these characters aren't even trying to hide it:

A year after President Obama's election, hate groups are feeling bolder than they have in over a decade, and their usually insular anger is beginning to spill into the public realm. This weekend, the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi organization, held rallies in Arizona and Minnesota. Those demonstrations came on the heels of similar actions in Southern California, where epithet-spewing white supremacists were forced to disband by rock-throwing counter-protesters. The upsurge in visibility is more than anecdotal—law-enforcement officials are monitoring levels of agitation among extremist groups that they say are the highest since Timothy McVeigh’s deadly attack in Oklahoma City nearly 15 years ago.

The outcries of right-wing tea-partiers, death panellers, birthers, and the like are accompanied by increased activity all along the paranoid fringe.

“It’s sort of a beehive now,” says James Cavanaugh, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Cavanaugh was one of the agents at the standoff at David Koresh’s Waco, Texas, compound in 1993 (which McVeigh timed his terrorist act to commemorate, two years later, on April 19, 1995). Last October in Tennessee, Cavanaugh aided in the arrest of two white supremacists charged with plotting to assassinate Obama, and in 2007 he helped bring down members of the Alabama Free Militia, who were found with hundreds of hand- and rifle grenades and other explosives. The arrests had an unsettling familiarity. “We haven’t had that kind of activity since the 1990s,” Cavanaugh says.

“We believe there is a real resurgence,” adds Lieutenant David Hall, director of the Missouri Information Analysis Center, which tracks antigovernment extremist groups around the Midwest. “The atmosphere is ripe.”

That was obvious to anyone who was in downtown Phoenix, Arizona, this past weekend:

The Arizona Republic reports that, as is so often the case, the anti-Nazis outnumbered the actual Nazis by about 10-to-1:

Members of the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group based out of Detroit, were met with a greater number of protesters.

Phoenix police kept the groups apart, as members from both sides shouted insults at each other.

Jeff Schoep, a NSM leader, said his group was standing in defense of America.

J.T Ready of Mesa also spoke at the America First Rally. He said the group was defending his country against invaders.

After about an hour, the neo-Nazis left the capitol to march down Jefferson Avenue before getting into their cars at 12th Avenue.

Andy Hernandez of Phoenix said he was surprised at the different types of people who showed up to protest the neo-Nazis.

"There's all kinds of people, from different races and colors," Hernandez said. "We represent America. We didn't shut them down, but we gave them a counter protest. We just oppose what Nazi represents."

Ironically, that was just what Ready himself whined to a reporter for Phoenix's Fox station in the video above:

Reporter: Do you consider yourself a National Socialist?

Ready: National Socialist? I am.

Reporter: Weren't Nazis considered National Socialists?

Ready: Well, there's a term that starts with an 'N' for calling black people too, uh, so I think that the 'N' term for National Socialists, calling them Nazis, is the same thing.

*Sniff* Gosh, we all should bow our heads in shame for having referenced National Socialists derogatorily. Lord knows they don't deserve it.

Anyway, it's true that the German National Socialists never called themselves "Nazis" because it was a indeed thought to be a derogatory term. On the other hand, American Nazis like George Lincoln Rockwell have always embraced the word. Why should anyone stop calling them what they plainly are?

[H/t Scarce.]

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