They’ll talk about change, about politics, about reform, about corruption, but they will never talk about war unless they mean something happening far away. Because to admit the existence of the war waged against us is to admit that we are combatants, and if we see that we are not fighting back, then we would have to admit that we have surrendered. That we have already been defeated.—The Arctic Circle Collective
Hassan al Sabbah, a brilliant Iranian polymath and tactician, founded the Nizari Ismai’li state, a state that flourished from 1090 to 1256 AD in Iran and Syria. This small state relied on a cadre of fearless professional assassins to protect itself from conquests, and to protect co-religionists living elsewhere from massacres.