The Avello Publishing website ( http://avellopublishing.wordpress.com/journal/ claims to be a publishing house which publishes philosophical and theoretical texts, featuring its own Avello Journal. At first glance, the website looks legitimate. For example, Avello releases what it calls a peer-reviewed academic journal, which features an editorial board comprised of many well-known academics from respectable universities. However, when one opens some of the feature articles in the website, the content immediately suggests a dubious nature. For example, in a book review featured on the site for the »Accelerationist Reader«, the opening sentence immediately raises concerns: »On Saturday night we welcomed David Hasselhoff and his girlfriend Hayley Roberts to speak at the Cambridge Union Society.
Hasselhoff’s career has not had any serious impact or effect on academia nor higher education, but he has caused radical political responses to capitalism.« In other words, the site appears to be a clear parody of the academic world and in particular the worlds of philosophy and political science. I investigated the website further through a google search, looking for explicit references to Avello. I came across the following google groups site, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/fa.philos-l/zXE8gLdrcnY, and a post entitled, »Warning: Avello Publishing«. In this post, the author Stephen Clark questions the legitimacy of Avello, for example, noting that after investigation, Jason Wakefield the claimed Editor of the publishing house, who states he has affiliations with Cambridge University has no such ties. I referred back to the Avello website address and Wakefield’s contact address is listed as Cambridge, UK, but not Cambridge University itself. Furthermore, Avello lists a program for an academic conference that the publishing house sponsored. On the program, the concluding round-table discussion of the conference only features one name, Jason Wakefield. The site thus appears to be a hoax intended to bait members of the academic community into submitting content to a journal, while also including members of the academic community on their editorial board without their knowledge.
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In an attempt to get a closer view of the ISIS crisis in the Middle East and the NATO interventions, I wanted to find diverse Islamic sources on the topic. This led me to the website of Sheikh Imran Hosein and his article “The Malhama (Armageddon) Gets Closer.” ( http://www.imranhosein.org/news/522-the-malhama-armageddon-draws-closer.html ) In my view, the article passes the CRAAP test clearly in 4 of the 5 categories. The information was posted on Wednesday the 29th of September, 2014 (although this is written in Arabic terminology, I referred to it on the Internet), hence its content is an immediate response to the decision for the US and NATO to intervene military against ISIS. In terms of relevance, the article addresses to understanding why the US would militarily intervene against ISIS, even though they have supported ISIS in the past, particularly against the Assad regime in Syria. The article thus answers the question I had for the real reasons behind the attacks on ISIS: the US wanted to militarily intervene against Syria last year, but could not find just cause. Now that they have funded ISIS they may realize the strategic ambition of bombing Syria since ISIS has created an outrage in the international community.
I would be comfortable in using this source in a research paper, in so far as it helps explain the paradox of why the US has funded ISIS in the past against Assad and now opposes it: the US was only funding ISIS to achieve its main strategic objective of removing Assad and attacking Syria. The author of the text is Sheikh Imran Hosein, an Islamic scholar who has also held a position in the United Nations according to this biography. He has also studied at many academic institutions throughout the world. The purpose of the information contained in the article is to provide an analysis that goes beyond the mainstream rhetoric concerning ISIS. Whereas the article is the opinion of the author, it must be held in question regarding accuracy. However, from the perspective of purpose, it does make sense when trying to unravel the ambiguous US policy decisions in the Middle East.
