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The complex legacy of Pablo Escobar: the rise and decline, part 2

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The beginnings of Escobar’s drug dealing career

At the end of the 1960s, Pablo Escobar was coming into this world. This man, who later said he was just “a decent man who exports flowers,” was already involved in Medellin’s organised crime scene, though only on a small level, when he was in his late teens. Together with Oscar Benel Aguirre, he was selling illegal cigarettes and committing “grand theft auto.” They and their friends also kidnapped a number of famous people and demanded large amounts of money as ransoms. And Escobar had even bigger plans. He wanted to get rich quickly, and he was ready to do anything to get it. As early as the 1970s, this included sneaking marijuana into the country. Later, the goods they brought in were changed to cocaine. Because of this, a lot of people saw him as a man marked. Around this time, Pablo started dating Maria Victoria Henao, who was a teenager. Her mother is said to have told her to forget about him unless she wanted to spend a lot of time going to see him in prison. Maria didn’t give up, and in the end, they got married in 1976, when he was 26 and she was 15. Juan and Manuela would be their two children. In the middle of the 1970s, not long before he married Maria, Pablo got involved in the growing cocaine trade. Another smuggler named Griselda Blanco brought him into the business. Within the United States in the 1960s, cocaine was more of a niche drug. Other drugs like marijuana, LSD, and heroin were much more common. But in the 1970s, cocaine use exploded all over the country. This was especially true in cities like New York and Miami as the disco scene grew. Because of this, the market for cocaine in Latin America, especially in Colombia, grew very quickly. At that time, this is what made it possible for drug cartels and small operators like Pablo to get into the business in Colombia in the mid-1970s. Pablo’s first job was with some well-known drug smugglers in Medellin. They hired him to bring packages of coca paste to processing plants in and around Medellin so that it could be turned into powdered cocaine. Soon enough, Pablo cut out some of the middlemen and started his own businesses to fly large amounts of fully processed cocaine out of Colombia and into the US via different routes. At the time, they had no idea that Pablo and his friends were setting up the first steps of what would become the Medellin Cartel. It was almost over for the Medellin Cartel before it even began. As Pablo and some others were on their way to Medellin in May 1976 with 18 kilogrammes of coca paste, they were caught. Pablo’s first thought was to try to pay off the people who had arrested him and then the judges in Medellin. This didn’t work, so Pablo tried to kill the police officers who arrested him so they wouldn’t have to testify against him in court. It looks like the risks of continuing to try to catch Escobar were too high for the authorities, and they decided to drop the case. He got away with it, but the way he got the charges dropped was typical of how Pablo behaved for the next fifteen years or so. If it helped him get ahead of his rivals or kept the police from catching him, Escobar was always ready to strike. And it’s important to keep this in mind when you think about Pablo Escobar. In the years that followed, he would constantly try to show himself as a humble drug dealer who thought drugs would be legalised one day. But behind these lies was someone who had ordered thousands of deaths over the years.

The Medellin Cartel

 In the late 1970s, Escobar and the Medellin Cartel’s business took off. This wasn’t just because the market for cocaine in the US grew, but also because the Cartel came up with a number of very good ways to bring the drug into the US. Carlos Lehder, a German-Colombian, and George Jung, an American from Massachusetts, did some drug smuggling after getting out of prison in Connecticut in 1976. Soon after, they started working for Escobar. Lehder was sent to Danbury Prison in Connecticut for smuggling drugs and selling stolen cars. Jung, on the other hand, was running a scheme to bring marijuana from Mexico to California and then ship it across the country to New England, where it sold for a huge amount more than it cost to buy in Mexico. In Danbury, on the other hand, they came up with a way to get into the growing cocaine trade. As a result, when they got out of jail, they started bringing cocaine from Colombia into the United States through the Caribbean and Florida, especially the city of Miami. The first reason Escobar hired them was to help his business grow by bringing bigger and bigger loads of cocaine into the United States.  But this would soon get bigger. In 1978, Carlos Lehder started buying land on Norman’s Cay, a Bahamian island, with the goal of turning it into a hub for cocaine trafficking between Colombia and the United States. Over the next few months, he used violence to scare local landowners into selling their land, even killing some of the residents. Lehder, who was unstable and paranoid, also pushed Jung out of the operation at this point.

The history of Norman’s Cay airports and how they came to be associated with cocaine

In just a few months, he turned the island into his own personal fiefdom. He then spent millions of dollars building a runway and warehouses. Norman’s Cay was the Medellin Cartel’s private airport in the Caribbean for a few years. It was located off the coast of the United States, close to the biggest cocaine market in the world. Large planes would bring huge amounts of Escobar’s cocaine to the island, where it would be unloaded and reloaded onto smaller planes that could fly into the US without being caught. Over 300 kilogrammes of cocaine were coming to Norman’s Cay every day at its busiest. This made Escobar, Lehder, and their friends billionaires. Lehder got so rich that he twice offered to pay off the Colombian government’s debt to avoid being charged with crimes.

Barry Seal’s Curious Partnership with the Medellin Narcotics Group

Barry Seal was another well-known associate at this time. Seal was a plane pilot from Baton Rouge, which is in the southern U.S. state of Louisiana. Like Jung, he started out in drug trafficking in the mid-1970s by bringing in marijuana from Mexico. But like Jung and Lehder, he quickly realised that bringing in cocaine, which was more valuable and easier to transport, would make him much more money. By 1981, he had set up a system for running his business and had made connections with Escobar and the Medellin Cartel. Seal used more than a dozen small planes that could fly low and stay out of American airspace without being picked up by radar. These planes would fly over the Gulf of Mexico and into Louisiana airspace. They would then drop the packages off at agreed upon locations in the country. The packages were then picked up by a team on the ground by Seal. They were then sent to Florida and delivered to the Medellin Cartel’s East Coast distribution network. Seal did work for Escobar, but it had two sides. In 1983, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) charged him with a crime. By early 1984, he was working as a US government informant and giving them a lot of information about Escobar and his business. Escobar finally found out about this and had Seal killed in February 1986. As a branch of the Medellin Cartel, Norman’s Cay was becoming Lehder’s private fiefdom, and Seal was dropping packages over Louisiana.

Escobar’s Hidden Empire

 At the same time, Escobar was setting up his own private kingdom in Colombia. Pablo bought 20 square kilometres of land around Puerto Triunfo, which is about 150 kilometres east of Medellin, with some of the money he made from his business. He built the huge Hacienda Napoles, or Naples Estate, here for himself and his family. The property had a Spanish colonial house, a sculpture park, and even a zoo with zebras, hippos, antelopes, elephants, giraffes, ostriches, and ponies that Escobar had brought into Colombia. Hippos were very important to Escobar, so many of them were brought into the Hacienda. Because of this decision, there are now wild hippos living in this part of Colombia. Pablo Escobar also gathered a large collection of old and expensive cars, motorcycles, and even built a kart track and a bullring. There was also an airport at the Hacienda, but it was only for visitors and wasn’t used by the Medellin Cartel for business. Escobar even planned to build an acropolis or citadel in the style of ancient Greece here, but this plan never came to fruition. This wasn’t the only big property Pablo bought either. Incredibly, even though Escobar was one of the biggest drug dealers in the US, he was able to buy a huge pink mansion on Miami Beach in Florida in the late 1970s. The house was registered in his own name because Escobar wasn’t yet a well-known drug lord, but the US government would seize the property in later years. Escobar also bought a huge estate on the island of Isla Grande, also known as the “Great Island,” in the Caribbean. The Islas del Rosario is a large group of islands located just over twenty miles off the north coast of Colombia. This is the largest island in the group. Like with the Hacienda Napoles, Escobar built a large estate here, complete with a mansion, extra apartments, animals that he brought in from other countries, swimming pools, and a landing pad for helicopters to make getting in and out easy. Additionally, these were only the fanciest homes that Escobar bought with money he got from the illegal drug trade in Colombia. The Medellin Cartel also owned hundreds of homes across the country, and they often only used them to hide their money in very fancy ways.

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Why British Left India? | Reality of Mahatma Gandhi’s Role 

by with No Comment history

For the Quit India Movement, which began on August 8, 1942 at the Gwalior Tank Maidan in Mumbai, the departure of the British from India is a momentous chapter in history. This movement is shrouded in mystery. When the All India Congress Committee got together to announce an audacious final struggle against the colonial rule, it was a momentous occasion that forever changed the course of history.

For the purpose of rallying the masses to embrace the mantra of “Do or Die,” Mahatma Gandhi delivered a speech that became legendary in front of a sea of onlookers. This speech signalled an unwavering determination for freedom from the oppressive British regime. It was on that momentous day that the discontent that had been building up for years against the imperialist dominion finally reached a boiling point, which was the beginning of the current movement.

On the other hand, the British authorities were not taken aback by the situation. Several months earlier, their Home Department had painstakingly developed a three-step strategy to put down any potential uprising. The strategy began with the control of propaganda, then moved on to the seizure of Congress offices, and finally culminated in the suppression of the growing movement.

The Arrests and Ongoing Struggle

The leaders of the Congress party, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, were swiftly arrested the following day, which severely hampered the movement’s ability to have a visible leadership. However, this disruption did not discourage the movement; rather, it served as a catalyst for the development of an uplifting story of perseverance and determination.

Failed Negotiations and British Offers

This movement was the culmination of a series of unsuccessful negotiations and offers presented by the British. The struggle for independence had a long history, and this movement was the culmination of that struggle. During World War II, numerous attempts were made by the British government to secure the cooperation of the Indian people. These efforts included the August Offer in 1940 and the Cripps Mission in 1942. On the other hand, the Indian leaders, led by Congress, steadfastly demanded complete independence and rejected these offers.

Brave Hearts Amidst Oppression

The fervour of the Quit India Movement was fueled by the participation of a wide variety of people. Among them, Usha Mehta, who was only 22 years old at the time, was particularly noteworthy because she was the one who secretly operated Congress Radio 42.34. She became a beacon of information dissemination during the time when the British authorities were stifling mainstream media. Her courageous efforts were heard all over the country, and she narrowly escaped capture until she was finally apprehended.

The Call for Support and Ordinary Heroes

At the same time, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, who was living in exile in Berlin at the time, supported Gandhi’s movement through his Azad Hind Radio, thereby demonstrating a unified front for the liberation of India. In the midst of the chaos, ordinary citizens such as Matangini Hazra displayed extraordinary bravery by leading rallies despite the fact that they could have fatal consequences. This exemplifies the unyielding spirit of the widespread population.

Several Different Types of Opposition

There was widespread participation in the movement, which encompassed a variety of forms of civil disobedience. These included strikes in factories, disruptions in government operations, and even instances of violence in certain regions. Despite this, Mahatma Gandhi, who was worn down by the violent turn of events, expressed a pragmatic stance during which he blamed the chaos on the oppressive policies of the British.

Arguments in Opposition and Collaborative Efforts

There were, however, voices within India that disagreed with the fervour for independence that was prevalent at the time. In opposition to the Quit India Movement, the Muslim League, which was led by prominent figures such as Fazlul Huq, and the Hindu Mahasabha, which included prominent figures such as Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, were seen to be aligning themselves with the British. When compared to the overwhelming demand for freedom, this collaboration with the colonial power by certain Indian factions stood in stark contrast to the current situation.

Attention from around the world and shifts in political power

Despite this, the Quit India Movement was successful in accomplishing its goal, which was to bring attention from around the world to India’s fight for independence. Global leaders, such as President Roosevelt, exerted pressure on the government of the United Kingdom to address India’s aspirations, which caused the winds of change to blow internationally. It was a watershed moment in British history when, in 1945, the Labour Party, led by Clement Attlee, rose to power and became the dominant political party. The possibility of India achieving its goal of self-governance was on the horizon.

The Legacy That Will Last Forever

As a result of this change in power, the Congress leaders who had been imprisoned were released, which paved the way for India’s eventual achievement of independence. Despite the fact that it involved sacrifices and struggles, the movement was a significant step in India’s march towards freedom.

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India-Pakistan 1971 War | Why it happened?

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As part of Operation Chengiz Khan, Pakistan launched aerial attacks on a number of Indian airfields on December 3, 1971. These airfields included those in Amritsar, Pathankot, Jodhpur, Ambala, Agra, and Srinagar. Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, quickly addressed the nation and declared the beginning of the war between India and Pakistan. This event marked the beginning of the India-Pakistan War, which went on until 1971. It was ultimately this conflict that resulted in the establishment of Bangladesh.

Contextualization of the Past

Allow me to take you back in time to the pre-colonial era before we delve into the complexities of the war. On the Indian subcontinent, there were a great number of independent kingdoms, each of which had its own language, traditions, and rulers. Since the 13th century, the Bengal region, which includes the areas that are now Bangladesh and West Bengal as well as the neighbouring regions, had been ruled by Muslim monarchs for a considerable amount of time.

Colonialism played a role.

In 1757, the East India Company established its dominance, which marked the beginning of British rule. This rule lasted until 1947, when the subcontinent was divided into India and Pakistan as a result of the traumatic partition. Religious tensions and geopolitical shifts were the driving forces behind the partition, which resulted in large-scale migrations and profound disruptions to all aspects of society and culture.

Origin of Pakistan as a nation

Pakistan was established in 1947, marking the beginning of the process of dividing the country along religious lines. This was the culmination of the demand for a separate state for Muslims. There were, however, differences that emerged within Pakistan, particularly between West Pakistan and East Pakistan (which is now known as Bangladesh).

Unrest in the political sphere and the imposition of Urdu

Political instability, economic disparities, and cultural differences all contributed to the widening of the rift between the two Pakistans after the formation of Pakistan. The Bengali Language Movement and protests started as a result of the government of West Pakistan’s decision to make Urdu the official language. This decision exacerbated the tensions that were already present.

Bangladeshi nationalism is on the rise.

Bengali nationalism and demands for autonomy were sparked as a result of the refusal to recognise Bengali as an official language and the subsequent suppression of protests. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the Awami League were particularly influential in this regard.

Conspiracy Case and Unrest in the Agartala Region

In the Agartala Conspiracy Case, Rahman and his associates were falsely accused of conspiring with India for East Pakistan’s independence. This further stoked public outrage and led to widespread demonstrations against the governance of West Pakistan.

The Elections of 1970 and the Political Consequences

The Awami League was able to win the vast majority of seats in East Pakistan during the 1970 elections, but it was unsuccessful in gaining any seats in West Pakistan. As a result of the subsequent annulment of election results by the authorities in West Pakistan, widespread unrest and demands for autonomy spread throughout the region.

Beginning of the Struggle for Independence

The declaration of independence by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on March 7, 1971, and the subsequent crackdowns by the Pakistani army marked the beginning of Bangladesh’s quest for liberation. This occurred in the midst of mounting tension and protests.

escalation to the point of war

The culmination of Pakistan’s military crackdown and atrocities committed against Bengalis was Operation Searchlight, which resulted in widespread genocide among Bengalis. After seeing the influx of refugees and the atrocities that were taking place, India decided to get involved in the conflict in order to support Bangladesh’s fight for independence.

Conflict between India and Pakistan and the Liberation of Bangladesh

During the course of India’s military intervention, Pakistan’s request for a cease-fire was rejected, which ultimately resulted in India and Bangladesh achieving a decisive military victory. In 1971, on December 16th, the momentous surrender of Pakistani forces marked the beginning of the independence of Bangladesh.

Aftermath and the Development of

The recognition of Bangladesh as an independent nation was formally established through the Simla Agreement. In the years following the war, Bangladesh was confronted with its own set of difficulties, including a struggle for stability, military coups, and changes in the government.

Both Reflections and a Legacy

At the same time that it highlights the dangers of linguistic imposition, cultural differences, and the consequences of political marginalisation, the history of Bangladesh’s creation sheds light on these issues. The significance of inclusive governance and the complexities of cultural diversity within nations are both brought up for consideration as a result of this.

The birth of Bangladesh in 1971 was a pivotal moment in history, one that was marked by the perseverance of a nation, the sacrifices that were made, and the struggles that were endured. An examination of this narrative compels us to contemplate the complexities of nation-building, the importance of cultural harmony, and the enduring legacy of decisions made throughout history.

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How did the British Empire take over India?  Fall of Mughal Empire

by with No Comment history

A historical journey that begins with the foundation and early challenges faced by the British East India Company during its rise to power in India

In the year 1600, the British East India Company embarked on its journey with the intention of initially engaging in commerce in the Spice Islands of Southeast Asia. In order to counteract the fierce competition that they faced from the Dutch, they refocused their efforts on India. Their early attempts in Indonesia were unsuccessful due to the Dutch’s dominance, despite the fact that they were successful. With the intention of achieving better opportunities, the Company shifted its focus to India and established its first factory in Surat in the year 1608.

Finding Your Way Through Political Terrains

While the Company was operating under the influence of the vast and powerful Mughal Empire, it encountered difficulties in obtaining trading permissions. Their initial efforts to establish a foothold in Surat were unsuccessful because the Portuguese, who were in favour with the Mughal rulers, were able to achieve their goals. After this, strategic shifts were implemented, which resulted in the establishment of important factories in areas that were not directly under Mughal control. One such region was Machlipatnam, which is located in Andhra Pradesh.

Strategic Engagements and Expansion

Through diplomatic manoeuvres in the year 1615, Sir Thomas Roe was finally successful in securing trading rights from Emperor Jahangir, which was a significant step forward. The establishment of numerous factories in a variety of cities in India led to the flourishing of the Company’s trade in a variety of commodities, including cotton, indigo, silk, and other goods.

The Acquiring of Power and Authority by the Company

An unprecedented grant of rights from the English monarchy in the vicinity of the year 1670 provided the East India Company with political, economic, and military authority. This granted the company the ability to acquire territories, form alliances, and even wage wars, which was a monumental step for a corporate entity. Nevertheless, their unfortunate conflict with the Mughals in 1686 proved to be disastrous, resulting in defeat, fines, and the reinstatement of trading privileges.

The Mughal rule was fragmented, which led to the consolidation of control.

An Era of Internal Supplications

Following Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, the Mughal Empire struggled with internal strife and power struggles, which paved the way for the rise of regional powers such as the Marathas. Both the external dangers posed by Persia and the instability of the financial system further weakened the central authority, which ultimately led to the establishment of local sovereign control.

The Company’s Operations and Strategies for Growth and Expansion

By strategically establishing Residents in various regions, enforcing Subsidiary Alliances on local rulers, and expanding its territorial control, the East India Company was able to capitalise on the weakened Mughal Empire. This was accomplished through the utilisation of alliances, political manipulations, and military might.

Transition to British Hegemony: The Intricacies of the Political Landscape

The Treaty of Allahabad, which was signed in 1765, was a momentous occasion that marked a turning point. It granted the Company the authority to govern Bengal and established its position as the de facto ruling entity. As a result of the Doctrine of Lapse, the British government was able to annex a number of territories, which ultimately led to the assumption of control by the British government in the year 1858.

The End of an Era: From the Rule of Companies to the British Raj and Their Legacy and the Impact Made After 1857

The First War of Independence, also known as the Revolt of 1857, ultimately led to the establishment of the British Raj and marked the end of the rule of the Company. By the year 1874, the British East India Company had ceased to exist, which marked the end of the company’s significant influence over the Indian subcontinent.

Alteration of the Political System in India

After the year 1857, the decline of the Mughal Empire and the establishment of the British Raj reshaped the socio-political landscape of India. This marked the end of a significant chapter in the history of the region.