Political Rights

Political conservatives and members of the so-called religious right attempted more often than any other groups to remove material deemed objectionable from classroom shelves, according to the 11th annual censorship study released Wednesday by People for the American Way. Overall, the study said, in the 1992-93 school year, parents, officials or organizations succeeded in 41% of 347 attempts to restrict or ban the use of teaching materials from American schools.

Signaling the official start of El Salvador's first postwar election campaign, the ruling party named its presidential candidate Sunday and used the occasion to defend party founder and reputed death-squad leader Roberto d'Aubuisson. The right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance formally chose San Salvador Mayor Armando Calderon Sol as its candidate in elections next March that will have former Marxist guerrillas taking part for the first time.

It's pure coincidence, but the simultaneous showing of a federally terrorized exhibition at MIT's List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, Mass., and last week's inauguration of a new President of the United States can't help but offer a flicker of hope to those who had come to fear for the future of the arts in this nation. The new President, you know. The MIT exhibition, you might not.

Urging President-elect Bill Clinton to honor promises made to black and urban voters, the Rev. Jesse Jackson says that he expects the new Administration to create jobs for the unemployed and to seek statehood for the District of Columbia. "Promises made should be promises kept," Jackson said repeatedly during a breakfast session at The Times' Washington bureau late last week.

During a 900-day siege that cost almost 700,000 lives here, the Nazis failed to fight their way into this city's center. But five decades later, home-grown fascists now claim St. Petersburg as the "spiritual center" of their nationwide movement. The fascists' leader is a police detective whose heroes are Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Their chief ideologist is a 23-year-old who teaches university Polish and writes ultranationalist tracts in her spare time.

A party platform that provoked outrage among abortion rights advocates but won cheers from conservative activists was given its finishing touches Thursday by a Republican drafting committee. In the past, the platform has taken a hard line against abortion. Dissenters had hoped that this year's manifesto would at least acknowledge room for diversity on the issue.

Warning that Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton's support among black voters is hemorrhaging, the Rev. Jesse Jackson pledged Thursday to support his party's presidential nominee--but he made it clear that his backing will be perfunctory at best. Clinton's campaign--including his choice of Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr.

Four San Diego County candidates are among 12 "Enemies of Choice" named by abortion rights forces Wednesday as their major targets for defeat in this year's state and national elections. Democratic State Sen. Wadie P. Deddeh, a candidate in the 50th Congressional District race, and three Republican state Assembly contenders--Connie Youngkin, Steve Baldwin and Dan Van Tieghem--were singled out by the California Abortion Rights Action League as anti-abortion candidates whom they hope to defeat.

Twelve thousand terrified Haitian refugees are being forcibly returned to their country by order of the President of the United States. They return to barren fields fertilized with blood. According to Amnesty International, the military bands now ravaging that poor country have already claimed more than 1,500 victims since the coup last fall that deposed the democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

A far-right party whose leader has praised German Third Reich labor policies and promised to protect "Austria for the Austrians" won a surprising 23% of the vote in Vienna city elections Sunday. The Freedom Party of Austria posted its third electoral gain in as many months by capitalizing on anti-foreigner and anti-Semitic sentiments that have flooded across Austria with the influx of refugees from war-torn and economically devastated areas of Eastern Europe.