Drone Attacks Research Articles

Western Societies and Islam

It is fair to say that the history of Europe, and by extension the United States, in relation to Islamic regions has been one characterized by violence and misunderstanding. By the end of the 8th century a vast empire from India to the east, spreading across the Middle East, North Africa and into Spain, consolidated Islamic rule. By the end of the 15th century Ottoman rule extended as far north as Hungary and across much of the Balkans. The response in Europe was over eight centuries of armed conflict, starting in the 8th century in a struggle to drive Islam out of the Spanish peninsula, which culminated in 1492, and almost simultaneously a long period of Crusades through the Middle East and Eastern Europe, beginning in the 11th century and lasting until the end of the 15th century. We do not need to revisit this troubled history to understand that what ensued has been an uneasy relationship between predominantly Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East. At the start of the 21st century, after the horrendous events that have come to be known as 9/11, it would appear that Europe and the US have entered a new round of ‘crusade-like’ conflict with the entire region. Under the pretense of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, the US and a loose coalition of so-called allies (mainly the UK) have been engaged in conflict in the region. Like all complex events, the underlying causes of this conflict can be found first in the struggle over Palestine since the end of the Second World War, then in the economic turmoil of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo as a result of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War during which Israel was supplied with military support by the US, and then in the Gulf War of 1990–1991 when a US-led force drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. We cannot understand the combination of forces arrayed without also considering the geo-politics of the day, as the US sponsored, trained and armed religious groups fighting against the Soviet forces that had occupied Afghanistan throughout most of the 1980s. As the 20th century came to a close, all of these factors contributed to the events that signaled the beginning of this new crusade. First, the US and some NATO forces invaded Afghanistan with the stated goal of pursuing and dismantling al-Qaeda in response to their role in the 9/11 events. By the Spring of 2003, US forces (again, leading a coalition mainly consisting of the UK, Australia, and Poland) was at war with, and invaded, Iraq under the pretext of what now has been documented to be false assumptions. As the first decade of the 21st century came to a close it appeared that European and US forces were finally withdrawing from the region. Troops were no longer in Iraq, leaving behind chaos and sectarian violence that has destabilized the region. The last troops are scheduled to depart from Afghanistan within the next year, and most people in the US, UK and NATO countries have little interest or willingness to remain engaged militarily – at least to the degree that troops are involved in a ground campaign, though selective bombing and the use of drone attacks continue. Yet, as 2014 comes to a close, the events unfolding in Syria and Iraq, and the rise of yet another extremist faction known as ISIS, has created one more round of saber-rattling in the US (the UK parliament 558198 CRS0010.1177/0896920514558198Critical Sociology research-article2014

DRONE ATTACKS IN AFGHANISTAN AND THE AF-PAK REGION: IS THERE ANY OTHER OPTION?

This paper is an attempt to analyse the contentious role of drone strikes in the context of the options available in the on-going fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and the Af-Pak region. There are significant legal issues here, both in terms of human rights and in terms of state sovereignty and independence, though there are those who argue that the concept of a “just war” provides adequate justification. Pragmatists focus on effectiveness. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, there are many individuals who lend their support to the drone attacks because they see no other alternative(s), given that the prospects for dialogue seems so unpromising. But however many jihadist leaders are killed, in drone strikes, other effective counter-insurgency action may provide a better option.

Offering mental health services in a conflict affected region of Pakistan: who comes, and why?

BackgroundNorth West Pakistan is an area ravaged by conflict and population displacement for over three decades. Recently, drone attacks and military operations have aggravated underlying mental disorders, while access to care is limited. Among patients attending a mental health clinic integrated in district hospital conducted by psychologists; we describe service utilization, patient characteristics, presenting complaints, morbidity patterns, and follow-up details.Methodology/Principal FindingsA retrospective study using routinely collected programme data was conducted from February to December 2012. A total of 1545 consultations were conducted for 928 patients (86% females). There were 71(8%) children and adolescents. An increase was observed from February to July, followed by a decline. 163 new patients (18%) were on psychotropic medication at presentation. The most common morbidity in females (36%) were symptoms of adjustment disorders and acute reactions. Depression and anxiety were common in both genders while post traumatic disorder was frequent in males (21%). Out of the 928 new patients, 639(69%) had a follow up visit planned with their psychologist, but only 220(34%) new patients returned for a follow up visit.ConclusionIn a district hospital, mental health services managed by psychologists were well attended. There is a need to consider widening the current package of care to cater to the diversity of mental health disorders, gender difference, children and adolescents. Standardized diagnostic and monitoring tools would also need to be adapted accordingly and to assess patient progress. Innovative approaches to tackle the problem of the low return rate are needed.

Droneism

“Is there racism against drones?” The moderator of a panel at DARC, the Drones and Aerial Robotics Conference in New York City last autumn, was attempting to summarize a question from the audience. A technologist in a suit had just contrasted the racial makeup of drone attack victims to a misconception that all unmanned aircraft are equipped with Hellfire missiles. “Did you know the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk is actually unarmed and used for surveillance?” he asked the speakers on stage. “Do you think the same racism that gets applied to people that we don’t know enough about is applied to drones because people don’t know enough about them?” It wasn’t the only accusation of bigotry toward technology that day.

Drones at Trial. State and Individual (Criminal) Liabilities for Drone Attacks

This article delves into issues of individual and State (criminal) liability for (lethal) drone operations; a yet unexplored area given the proliferation of drone attacks in recent years. The criteria under which military and political leaders can (possibly) be held criminally accountable for conducting drone attacks within and outside an armed conflict are outlined, based upon ICTY, ICC and ECHR-case law. Against this background, the discrepancies and pitfalls of the U.S. policy vis-à-vis drone attacks are discerned, as well as the subject-matter of responsibilities of third states which facilitate principal States such as the U.S. in these attacks.

The True Meaning of Force

Tom Ruys’s article in the latest issue of the American Journal of International Law is an erudite study of the prohibition on the use of force in UN Charter Article 2(4). Ruys makes many points with which I wholeheartedly agree. In note 241, he says that the case for cross-border drone attacks by the United States “verges on stretching criteria for necessity, proportionality, and armed attack to the point of absurdity . . . .” He is also right to reject emerging claims that the defense of necessity provides a basis for the lawful resort to force. Indeed, there is much that is truly excellent about the article—just not, unfortunately, its central thesis.

Exposure to the Elite Narrative: Explaining Pakistani Public Opinion and American Drone Attacks

This paper is an analysis of the sources of Pakistani public opinion toward American drone strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan. An examination of Pakistani opinion toward the drones show two clear patterns: A slim majority of Pakistanis know about the drone strikes but that number is growing over time. Also, those Pakistanis who know about the drone strikes are very opposed to them. We argue that the rather limited knowledge of the drone strikes is not for lack of an elite discourse about drone attacks but because of the relatively low levels of political cognitive mobilization in a population with very low levels of education. But given the almost universal condemnation of drone strikes from all strata of Pakistani political and societal elites, we argue that it is to be expected that those who have absorbed a good deal of information about the strikes will be greatly opposed to the attacks. In other words, in an informational environment such as Pakistan has been for the last few years, to have heard about drone strikes is to have been exposed to nearly unanimous elite criticism of drone strikes with an extremely limited counter-narrative. Thus, we argue that the more a Pakistani has heard of drone strikes in Pakistan, the more likely she is to oppose them. This hypothesis is tested in a Heckman analysis, which confirms our supposition.

'One Hell of a Killing Machine': Signature Strikes and International Law

Although the vast majority of drone attacks conducted by the United States have been signature strikes — strikes that target ‘groups of men who bear certain signatures, or defining characteristics associated with terrorist activity, but whose identities aren’t known’—scholars have paid almost no attention to their legality under international law. This article attempts to fill that lacuna. Section 2 explains why a signature strike must be justified under either international humanitarian law (IHL) or international human rights law (IHRL) even if the strike was a legitimate act of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter. Section 3 explores the legality of signature strikes under IHL. It concludes that although some signature strikes clearly comply with the principle of distinction, others either violate that principle as a matter of law or require evidence concerning the target that the United States is unlikely to possess prior to the attack. Section 4 then provides a similar analysis for IHRL, concluding that most of the signature strikes permitted by IHL — though certainly not all — would violate IHRL’s insistence that individuals cannot be arbitrarily deprived of their right to life.

Drones over Yemen: Weighing Military Benefits and Political Costs

The future role of US drones has been the subject of considerable controversy due to their use in remote parts of the world to target individuals designated as terrorists. In his confirmation hearings, Secretary of State John Kerry expressed concerns about overseas perceptions of such activities by stating that, American foreign policy is not defined by drones and deployments alone. (1) Additionally, within the United States, many issues surrounding drone use clearly need scrupulous legal and ethical consideration. Underlying all these factors, however, must be a consideration of the issue of military effectiveness. Regulating the use of a marginally valuable weapons-system is easy, while regulating a highly effective system in a way that forecloses options can be difficult since more is at stake. Careful consideration must be given to how effectively these systems can serve US interests as well as the negative consequences of overseas backlash to their use when evaluating their optimal place in US strategy. In the case of Yemen, drones are not popular with the local population, but they do appear to have been stunningly successful in achieving goals that support the United States and Yemeni national interests by helping to defeat the radical group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). This organization is one of the most successful affiliates of the original al Qaeda group led by Osama bin Laden until his death in 2011. AQAP became prominent in the early 2000s when it began terrorist operations in Saudi Arabia, though it was ultimately defeated in that country. Following this defeat, AQAP retained its name and regrouped in Yemen, merging with the local al Qaeda organization operating there in 2009. AQAP (which Yemenis simply call al Qaeda) has a recent history of challenging the Yemeni government as well as a long record of attempting to execute spectacular terrorist events in the United States. This agenda has made it vital for the United States to oppose AQAP and help the Yemeni government in a variety of ways, including drone use, when appropriate. Clearly fearing a domestic backlash, former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who remained in office until early 2012, consistently denied his government was allowing the United States to conduct drone operations over Yemen. Saleh's denials regarding drones could hardly be considered credible since some extremely high profile strikes occurred while he was president. Of special importance was a successful February 2002 missile attack on six senior al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen. The Saleh government originally claimed these individuals were killed in a Yemeni Air Force bombing attack, but this story unraveled after a senior US official revealed information about the drone strike during a CNN interview. (2) In response to domestic pressure created by the CNN disclosure, Saleh eventually acknowledged that the February 2002 strike was conducted by a US drone, but he did not admit to any later strikes by the time he left power ten years later. (3) The president's continuing denials were almost universally disbelieved as there had been numerous Yemeni and international news reports of US drone warfare against AQAP, often citing seemingly credible sources on background. These press reports included a discussion of a fatal September 2011 US drone attack on AQAP planner Anwar al Awlaki. In response to such information, Saleh went so far as to claim that Yemeni forces had killed Awlaki, although virtually no one took such statements seriously. (4) In sharp contrast to Saleh, current Yemeni President Abed Rabbu Hadi has spoken glowingly of US drones used in Yemen, describing them as an effective way to strike the enemy while minimizing collateral damage to innocent civilians through precision strikes. (5) Despite Hadi's assurances, drone use remains a hotly contested domestic issue in Yemen. Achievements in Yemen Enabled by Drones The history of US drone activity in Yemen is still subject to considerable secrecy and cannot be written in full until more information has been declassified and released. …

Drones: Legitimacy and Anti-Americanism

The appearance of new weapons technologies often gives rise to questions of legitimacy. The use of missile weapons against armored knights was considered illegitimate and unchivalrous by some, as well as a destabilizing influence on the conduct of civilized warfare. An acknowledged and accepted set of rules, designed to limit the vulnerability of the ruling elite in combat, made longbow and crossbow technology illegitimate in the eyes of that warrior-class. (1) German U-boat actions against commerce in World War I, the use of aerial bombardment against civilian populations, and defoliation agents in Vietnam, are modern examples of new technologies whose legitimacy was contested in times of conflict. (2) Questions of legitimacy, however, have not always been linked to the condition of war or to a specific technology. British concentration camps curing the Boer War were examples of illegitimate policies related to warfare devoid of any specific technological change. Their illegitimacy came not from technology but from the legal and ethical questions raised by the implementation of those methods of waging war. (3) Throughout these debates over technology and policies, the term legitimacy seldom meant the same thing. Legitimacy has been used in such circumstances interchangeably with concepts such as proportional, moral, ethical, lawful, appropriate, reasonable, legal, justifiable, righteous, valid, recognized, and logical. The recent phenomena of using unmanned vehicles, or drones, to deliver lethality in situations of conflict is yet another instance in which a type of technology has proliferated before considerations of its legitimacy have been agreed upon: The exponential rise in the use of drone technology in a variety of military and non-military contexts represents a real challenge to the framework of established international law and it is both right as a matter of principle, and inevitable as a matter of political reality, that the international community should now be focusing attention on the standards applicable to this technological development, particularly its deployment in counterterrorism and counter-insurgency initiatives, and attempt to reach a consensus on the legality, of its use, and the standards and safeguards which should apply to it. (4) The current debate over the legitimacy of America's use of drones to deliver deadly force is taking place in both public and official domains in the United States and many other countries. (5) The four key features at the heart of the debate revolve around: who is controlling the weapon system; does the system of control and oversight violate international law governing the use of force; are the drone proportionate acts that provide military effectiveness given the circumstances of the conflict they are being used in; and does their use violate the sovereignty of other nations and allow the United States to disregard formal national boundaries? Unless these four questions are dealt with in the near future the impact of the unresolved legitimacy issues will have a number of repercussions for American foreign and military policies: Without a new doctrine for the use of drones that is understandable to friends and foes, the United States risks achieving near-term tactical benefits in killing terrorists while incurring potentially significant longer-term costs to its alliances, global public opinion, the war on terrorism and international stability.(6) This article will address only the first three critical questions. The question of who controls the drones during their missions is attracting a great deal of attention. The use of drones by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct signature strikes is the most problematic factor in this matter. Between 2004 and 2013, CIA drone attacks in Pakistan killed up to 3,461--up to 891 of them civilians. (7) Not only is the use of drones by the CIA the issue, but subcontracting operational control of drones to other civilian agencies is also causing great concern. …

The costs and consequences of drone warfare

One of the distinctive elements of President Barack Obama's approach to counterterrorism has been his embrace of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, to target terrorist operatives abroad. The Obama administration has used drones in active theatres of war, such as Afghanistan, but it has also dramatically increased the number of drone attacks launched by the CIA in other countries, such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The conventional wisdom on drone warfare holds that these weapons are highly effective in killing terrorist operatives and disabling terrorist organizations, while killing fewer civilians than other means of attack. This article argues that much of the existing debate on drones operates with an attenuated notion of effectiveness that discounts the political and strategic dynamics—such as the corrosion of the perceptions of competence and legitimacy of governments where drone strikes take place, growing anti-Americanism and fresh recruitment of militant networks—that reveal the costs of drone warfare. Focusing particularly on drone use in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the article suggests that the Obama administration's counterterrorism policy operates at cross-purposes because it provides a steady flow of arms and financial resources to build up governments whose legitimacy it systematically undermines by conducting unilateral strikes on their territory. It concludes that the US embrace of drone technology is a losing proposition over the long term as it will usher in a new arms race and lay the foundations for an international system that is increasingly violent, destabilized and polarized between those who have drones and those who are victims of them.

The Other Pakistan: Special Laws, Diminished Citizenship and the Gathering Storm

The Pakistani tribal areas of FATA and PATA are perpetually in the international headlines for Taliban activities, U.S. Drone attacks, NATO supply lines and a whole host of political and military events that contribute to the current milieu in Afghanistan and the escalating instability in neighboring Pakistan. What is less known is that all these areas have been historically governed by a special set of laws and regulations in the colonial period as well as the post-colonial era. This in turn has contributed to a very differential set of rights, reduced access to justice, and asymmetric social and economic development. Furthermore, this has had a direct impact on the human rights protection regime in the region, especially for the more vulnerable groups. In this context, the article looks in particular at the Taliban insurgency in the valley of Swat in 2009 which called for the reform of the extant legal system as well as the government and the judiciary’s response to the same – based on an actual visit to the valley during the time and interviews with the local judiciary. The article uses the Swat experience as a case study for the historic constitutional, legal, and administrative treatment of these areas and the multiple issues that such treatment has spawned. In particular, there are the issues of deliberate governmental avoidance of the real underlying causal factors that have stemmed a strong popular resistance to the existing legal system, the use of Islam as a slogan for reform by both the Taliban as well as the government, the various inadequacies of the governmental reform package including erosion of the due process of law and other ad hoc measures, the presence of the army in the area and its controversial investigation and treatment of suspected Taliban insurgents or sympathizers which is not conducted under the rubric of the Pakistani legal system and is also beyond the pale of any international human rights accountability, the special anti-terrorist legal regime in the areas and its various challenges and other significant human rights themes. The article also provides a snap shot of the various additional special legal regimes in the areas of FATA and PATA (including the infamous Frontier Crimes Regulation 1901) that promote undesirable forms of tribal justice, various colonial forms of punishment including collective punishment to the whole tribe for an individual crime, several additional administrative powers and measures that lead to the human rights violations of women, children, and other innocent civilians, and other archaic aspects of a colonial legal regime introduced during the 'Great Game' that persists in the twenty-first century. While written against the backdrop of significant current events that have a resonance for an international affairs audience, the article endeavors to conduct a scholarly historical, sociological and legal analysis of the legal and administrative system of a region that is currently the focus of international attention as it has become a hot bed of militancy – especially since there is hardly any available rigorous literature on these significant themes. At the same time, it highlights various human rights themes that are consistently neglected by relying on diverse literature, empirical work, and different research methodologies that ought to make it compelling for human rights scholars, comparative lawyers, international public policy and justice sector reform experts and any social scientists who are generally interested in this highly complex, ill-understood and fascinating region.

Game Changer

Game Changer

The discursive protection of national interests

This article combines methodology from the discourse-historical approach with critique from Indigenous feminism and postcolonial theory to examine the “update” feature of Internet news and its potential impact on knowledge. The notion of text becomes abstract as authors produce neo-texts labeled “updated,” leading to opacity in editorial processing. From a case study analyzing an Associated Press article discussing Pakistani responses to U.S. drone attacks, we observe negative (re)presentation of Indigenous peoples in Pakistan as authors use rhetorical strategies to achieve erasure in subsequent revisions. I interpret the authors as employing such strategies to legitimize United States’ power under the axiological guise of protecting “democracy.” The revisions silence tribal leaders’ and women’s voices, substituting elements that interdiscursively appeal to “terrorism” in a post-9/11 context. The authors dissolve the distinction between tribal peoples in Pakistan and “terrorists.” U.S. military aggression is linguistically realized as defensive, and Pakistani disapprobation framed as offensive attack.

Legality Over Drone Attacks from the Facet of International Humanitarian Law

“My concern is that these drones, these predators, are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law.” Philip Alston.The thespian rise in the exercise of stealth technology by developed states has raised a pivotal issue over the spirit of humanitarian law. There is no second thought about the illegality over such a weapon of mass destruction. On the other hand the contention is pretty clear; accuracy and casualties. They claim that drones are meant to accomplish mission to the level of accuracy without causing any collateral damage. They refer such attacks as target killing. In the discourse of International humanitarian law, the lopsidedness of actors in conflict is crystal clear. In modern contexts of warfare, this imbalance raises a major quandary of shifting hostilities. The Asymmetric Warfare elevated the snag to apply the principle of distinction. This brief study objects to discuss the legality over the target killing by drone attacks on the altar of IHL. It is not only which International Humanitarian law but also the International Human Rights law is violated, when drones the brings terror over ground. With development of technology, the shape and structure of the warfare has changed. The asymmetric warfare has led to shifting of hostilities. On one hand, the belligerents attacks into heart of cities surrounded by innocent civilians while on other, in retaliation the powerful states attacks via drones to kill the belligerents; during the ops the innocent civilians dies again. Hence, in both situations, civilians turn out to be the ultimate victims of collateral damage. This brief study will portray the legality of drone attacks from humanitarian perspective.

COUNTERTERRORISM AND THE NEW AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

The tenets of American exceptionalism—defined as its civil religion—have shifted over time, and exceptionalism's most recent iteration has alarming ramifications, demonstrated through US counterterrorism policy. In crucial respects, the American project can be compared to ancient Rome: in its civil universalism; its sense of exceptional destiny; its use of sacred symbols; and its militarization. Global terrorism today threatens America's sense of divine blessing, its civil-religious identity. The mindset undergirding current US counterterrorism, especially the extensive use of drone attacks, should be normatively criticized as a sharp deviation from the traditional ethos of exceptionalism. The new ethos is one of ruthlessly purging the world of alleged threats rather than redeeming/transforming the world.

Droning on: the rise of the machines

Five activists have been sentenced for their role in a protest against U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan at a New York military base last year. The activists were arrested at the New York Air National Guard base at Hancock Field near Syracuse, New York. They draped themselves in white clothes splattered with blood-red pigment and then staged a ‘‘die-in’’ at the main entrance to the base. The group calls themselves the Hancock 38 Drone Resisters. Thirty-three of the activists were sentenced in December. On Wednesday, the remaining five were sentenced to fines and a one-year conditional discharge 1 Mike Davis once referred to the car bomb as the ‘‘quotidian workhorse of urban terrorism’’ (Davis 2007). The point seems quaint these days. In the interceding half decade or so, the car bomb has changed sides, enlisted in the Air Force, and grown wings (think of the money we save on parking). We refer, of course, to the drone—that piece of solitary, guiltless, menacing, and wonderfully affordable machinery that is enabling police actions all over the oily parts of the globe. Part sterile male bee, part Robocop, part national security IUD, part engine of the San Diego economy, this amazing new toy of national diplomacy has the ability to camouflage itself even on the front page of the New York Times. Its opposite is not so lucky. Locally, the quotidian

The Legality of Targeted Drone Attacks as U.S. Policy

The first of a two-part series on the legality and ethics of targeted killing, this paper closely examines the legal regime under which targeted killing takes place. It looks to both international law and domestic law to conclude that targeted killings can be legal. Importantly, the paper investigates the political implications of relying on targeted killings as the prominent form of counter-terrorism.

Legal, Political and Ethical Dimensions of Drone Warfare under International Law: A Preliminary Survey

This article delves into the advent of drone warfare and the international (criminal) law, political and ethical dimensions thereof. Fundamental questions to be addressed in this article are: who is accountable if decisions leading to lethal force are left up to computers? And under what legal regime may lethal forces by drones been administered? The U.S. policy, advocating that drone attacks are permissible under international and U.S. law, is outlined; as are the pitfalls of this policy. The implications of CIA operatives carrying out drone attacks are assessed. Finally, political and ethical dimensions of drone attacks will conclude this article.

The Helix of Human Cognition: Knowledge Management According to DIKW, E2E, and the Proposed View

Motto: Attributing cognitive uncertainty and subjectivity of communicating entities to the communicated information is as delusional as attributing movements of the planet Earth to the Sun. Section 1: Introduction In some respects, our "age of information" resembles the pre-Copernicus era in astronomy. Cognitive problems of uncertainty and subjectivity that are experienced by communicating entities (informing entities and entities informed) are attributed to information they exchange. When information (a message or a communication) is viewed as anything "in form"--a pattern of physical states that plays a role only with regard to its form as a factor for operations (e.g., identifier, time, location in drone attacks)--it reminds us of blaming the messenger for the message, just as much of a delusion as attributing movements of our planet Earth to the Sun. Disparate views abound in scholarly literature. Frequently, a wide chasm separates views among academicians and the views of practitioners. This physical and pragmatic approach offers a platform and framework for verifiable reasoning of improved transparency and cohesion. Frank Blackler (1995), in his seminal study, outlined an alternative approach to knowledge. He considers the term, knowing, to be more appropriate, because he views knowledge as a complex process that is mediated, situated, provisional, pragmatic, and contested. Martin Fricke (2009) reviewed the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) Hierarchy as "part of the canon of information science and management." He identified a central logical error in DIKW, offered arguments that the hierarchy is unsound and methodologically undesirable, and offered some alternatives. About the same time, Jean-Baptiste P. L. Faucher, Andre M. Everett, and Rob Lawson (2008) embarked independently upon reconstituting knowledge management. These researchers move away from the hierarchical relationships among data, information, knowledge, and wisdom and offer a new model from Existence to Enlightenment (E2E) as a "cognitive system of knowledge" that redefines the scope of knowledge management. They criticize the current approaches, saying that they lack clear boundaries of knowledge, so they add Existence at the lower end and Enlightenment at the higher end. The latter two efforts partially complement each other, but both ignore most of Blackler's postulates regarding knowledge and the need for quality assurance and feedback in knowledge management, which is surprising in light of the nearly two-decade-long MIT Information Quality (MITIQ) Program (http://mitiq.mit.edu/MITIQ/MITIQ.aspx) that studies and promotes information quality. This paper proposes a further departure from the current way of thinking. On the one hand, one may accept some elements of their critiques: (a) Fricke's (2009) critique of the DIKW Hierarchy, and (b) the implicit critique by Faucher et al. (2008) of the hierarchy and the extension of the model by Existence (see Section 2). On the other hand, a physical and pragmatic approach to information is proposed, where data are purely human constructs and are subsets of information. Knowledge management must deal with a broad scope of information, data, and other elements of knowledge from the rigorous to the esoteric. This is a theoretical paper that presents the author's position in a positivist down-to-earth manner that views information and informing as natural physical phenomena that are interpreted pragmatically; it makes no references to ontology, about the nature of being, and to epistemology, which studies the nature of knowledge. Specifically, this approach: 1. views increments of understanding through the pragmatic lens of decision making to act 2. emphasizes the use of natural semantics of material pragmatic consequences 3. recognizes a gradual linear additive of the quantitative extension of understanding until a critical point is reached that triggers qualitative changes 4. …