According to a Red Guard leader, the movement's aims were as follows:
Chairman Mao has defined our future as an armed revolutionary youth organization...So if Chairman Mao is our Red-Commander-in-Chief and we are his Red Guards, who can stop us? First we will make China Maoist from inside out and then we will help the working people of other countries make the world red...And then the whole universe.[2]
Despite being met with resistance early on, the Red Guards received personal support from Mao, and the movement rapidly grew. Mao made use of the group as propaganda and to accomplish goals such as destroying symbols of China's pre-communist past, including ancient artifacts and gravesites of notable Chinese figures. However, the government was very permissive of the Red Guards, who were even allowed to inflict bodily harm on people viewed as dissidents. The movement quickly grew out of control, frequently coming into conflict with authority and threatening public security until the government made efforts to rein the youths in. The Red Guard groups also suffered from in-fighting as factions developed among them. By the end of 1968, the group as a formal movement had dissolved.
The dominant factor in an epic is the heroic main character. This character often is the son of a god or goddess and is favored by the gods. Heroic characters are also always hounded by constant tragedy which drives them to fulfill their fates. Most heroic characters are high in social status and share close contacts with the gods. All of these qualities of heroic characters show up in the characters of Aeneas <span>from The </span>Aeneid<span> and Gilgamesh from the </span>Epic of Gilgamesh<span>. </span>
October 1962, an American U-2 spy plane secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union on the island of Cuba. President Kennedy did not want the Soviet Union and Cuba to know that he had discovered the missiles. He met in secret with his advisors for several days to discuss the problem.
After many long and difficult meetings, Kennedy decided to place a naval blockade, or a ring of ships, around Cuba. The aim of this "quarantine," as he called it, was to prevent the Soviets from bringing in more military supplies. He demanded the removal of the missiles already there and the destruction of the sites. On October 22, President Kennedy spoke to the nation about the crisis in a televised address.
President Kennedy signs Cuba quarantine proclamation
No-one was sure how Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would respond to the naval blockade and US demands. But the leaders of both superpowers recognized the devastating possibility of a nuclear war and publicly agreed to a deal in which the Soviets would dismantle the weapon sites in exchange for a pledge from the United States not to invade Cuba. In a separate deal, which remained secret for more than twenty-five years, the United States also agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey. Although the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba, they escalated the building of their military arsenal; the missile crisis was over, the arms race was not.
In 1963, there were signs of a lessening of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. In his commencement address at American University, President Kennedy urged Americans to reexamine Cold War stereotypes and myths and called for a strategy of peace that would make the world safe for diversity. Two actions also signaled a warming in relations between the superpowers: the establishment of a teletype between the Kremlin and the White House and the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on July 25, 1963.
In language very different from his inaugural address, President Kennedy told Americans in June 1963, "For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
Having weathered this crisis, Necker continued to serve the monarchy until September 1790, when he resigned his position and retired to a château in Switzerland. He died there on April 9, 1804.
