Talk:Enver Hoxha/Archive1

I'm going to assume
I'm going to assume that RationalWiki's biographies of statesmen are meant to focus on their attitude towards science, religion, social policies, and similar themes. Obviously humor is all well and good, but let's not forget that Hoxha is noted in various sources as the Eastern Bloc's only intellectual leader, who initiated an unprecedented campaign to pretty much entirely abolish religion in Albania based on historical and social reasons. I myself plan to expand the article a fair bit to better discuss these subjects. --Ismail (talk) 09:53, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Could you also include that he was a paranoid dictator who had concrete machine gun posts every few hundred yards all over the country? Perhaps there was a rational reason for this. This article's a bit of a whitewash. Sophie  Wilder  10:06, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe I could include that Albania had left the Warsaw Pact soon after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and that Albania and Greece were in a technical state of war until 1987, and that the UK and USA tried to overthrow his government in 1949-51; there would be context and not just "lol funny foreign country stuff"? --Ismail (talk) 10:34, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Go ahead... don't forget their death penalty for anyone over eleven for "conspiring against the state." Sophie  Wilder  10:47, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * That was in the context of the attempts by the UK and USA to overthrow the government and a bombing at the Soviet embassy in the Albanian capital. --Ismail (talk) 10:49, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * This'll do for starters Sophie  Wilder  10:56, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * It's not even sourced. But no matter, I know what it's referencing; Stavro Skendi's 1956 book Albania. As I said, it was in the context of the government finding itself basically under attack. At the time such laws were classified as "profoundly revolutionary," due to the extraordinary situation of the time. It does not mean that 12+ year olds were liberally executed. --Ismail (talk) 10:59, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh well that's all right then. Sophie  Wilder  11:11, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * The 1977 Penal Code modified the minimum age a person could be sentenced to death (put it up to 18), and let us not forget that the death penalty in regards to those crimes was not mandatory. This same code reduced the amount of cases where the death penalty could be applied, BTW. --Ismail (talk) 11:18, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Where this article seems to be going...
Seems to be turning into a relatively lulz-free, not-terribly-critical take on a dictator. The article seems to just stop shy of praising the guy for having used the state as a means by which to prevent people from practicing their faith. Yay? Theory of Practice Haters gonna hate. 21:48, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Revert to July version? Тy Bored 21:56, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Dude has put a bit of work into it--let him explain where he's going first. Theory of Practice Haters gonna hate. 22:03, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't intend to expand the article further. I just figured that if there's going to be an article on Hoxha it could proceed from a more mature and interesting basis than "lol wacky east european guy from albania lollll." Still, I reserve my quality attempts for Wikipedia like this article I made: Soviet-Albanian split --Ismail (talk) 22:08, 24 August 2012 (UTC)