The

The Hello and welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood.

Behind the news continues to be a still point in a turning world.

Two guests, two segments. Naomi Hussein will update us in politics in Bangladesh after their recent election,

and Stuart Schrader will talk about the relation of local cops to Trump's crackdown, authoritarianism from below.

Americans notoriously don't pay much attention to the

outside world, especially beyond a handful of countries. Among the countries we pay little

attention to is Bangladesh, though the older among us may recall the 1971 concert for that country,

which raised funds for those displaced by its war of independence from neighboring Pakistan.

Admittedly, overshadowed by its very large neighbor, India, Bangladesh is nonetheless not a small country.

It's the eighth most populous in the world, with 171 million people. The two dominant forces

in Bangladeshi politics over the years have been the Awami League, founded in 1949, and led by the daughter

of one of its founders, Sheikh Hasina, who was deposed in August 24, and the Bangladesh National

Party founded in 1978 by Zohar Rahman, father of the incoming Prime Minister, Tharik Ramon.

Politics in the country have largely been family businesses, and this election

extended that, at least for now. Naomi Hossein, who is Bangladeshi Irish, is a professor of

development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, which now mostly goes by its

acronym Soas at the University of London. She was on this show on August 24, when a student-led uprising

drove Sheikh Hasina not really out of office, but also out of the country. Here she is with an

update following the February 12th election. Bangladesh has elected a new prime minister,

Tariq Ramon. This is a guy who went into exile after corruption charges almost 20 years ago.

Who is he exactly? And how did

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