Leeds, United Kingdom

Security, Terrorism and Insurgency

Master's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: security services
Qualification: MA
Kind of studies: part-time studies
Master of Arts (MA)
University website: www.leeds.ac.uk
Insurgency
An insurgency is a rebellion against authority (for example, an authority recognized as such by the United Nations) when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents. An insurgency can be fought via counter-insurgency warfare, and may also be opposed by measures to protect the population, and by political and economic actions of various kinds aimed at undermining the insurgents' claims against the incumbent regime. The nature of insurgencies is an ambiguous concept.
Security
Security is freedom from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) from external forces. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems, and any other entity or phenomenon vulnerable to unwanted change by its environment.
Terrorism
Terrorism is, in the broadest sense, the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence as a means to create terror among masses of people; or fear to achieve a financial, political, religious or ideological aim. It is used in this regard primarily to refer to violence against peacetime targets or in war against non-combatants. The terms "terrorist" and "terrorism" originated during the French Revolution of the late 18th century but gained mainstream popularity during the U.S. Presidency of Ronald Reagan (1981–89) after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings and again after the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. in September 2001 and on Bali in October 2002.
Security
In the entire world, there is not a single establishment of the security industry that is not based on monopoly or on communism.  …  Political economy has disapproved equally of monopoly and communism in the various branches of human activity, wherever it has found them.  Is it not then strange and unreasonable that it accepts them in the security industry?
Gustave de Molinari, tr. J. Huston McCulloch, §IV of The Production of Security (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009; orig. 1849), pp. 27–28.
Terrorism
Islamic terrorists are against us because of what we do, not who we are…if we did not attack them, then their leadership would have trouble persuading their followers that they need to die attacking the American way of life.
Michael Scheuer, ex head of CIA anti-terrorist unit on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) 7.30 report (23 November 2004).
Security
From that point, my universe went on crumbling; new cracks appeared all the time. I could see that the pleasant securities of childhood, all of those warm little human emotions, all of those trivial aims and purposes that we allow to rule our lives, were an illusion. We were like sheep munching grass, unaware that the butcher's lorry is already on its way. I got used to living with a deep, underlying feeling of uncertainty that no one around me seemed to share. It was rather like living on death row.
Colin Wilson in Alien Dawn, pp. 12-13 (1998)
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