Fur Is Evil

Step Four: After clicking that last ad — and now a mere two clicks from a sponsored ad on Google’s Chinese home page — here’s what you find: an industrial dog meat farm. I think the pictures speak for themselves. (By the way, at this point, we’re still on Alibaba’s website, which is 40% owned by Yahoo.) The pictures spell out an ugly story that should be fairly unacceptable to most American citizens. Two Northern California companies are knowingly profiting from the dog meat and dog fur business.

If you’d like to explore this dog meat farm, they are located in a city called Linyi, in Shandong Province, China. The Google Maps link is here. check out their website here.

Step Three: Now, remember, we’re still literally only one click away from Google’s home page at this point. Now, let’s pick one of those dog fur sellers, like this one:

Step Two: Click on the sponsored link — thus making money for Google and 40% Yahoo-owned Alibaba — to find yourself on this page with literally tens of thousands of dog skins  available to you:

Step One:  Search in CHinese for “Dog Fur” (狗皮). Note the sponsored link above the search result (from a few minutes ago):

Sponsored Dog Fur Ad on Google's home page

These two screenshots are from today. The first image shows a sponsored link on Google’s Chinese-language home page for Dog Skin. Clicking on the link takes one to a page with literally hundreds of thousands of units of dog skin for sale. The second image is the seller-provided photo of piles of dog skin on that page on Alibaba.com.cn.

Google obviously doesn’t give a crap about dogs or cats, or any other animals caught up in the fur trade.

Well, just like the millions of animals try to break free from their cages right now all over the world, we will not stopo making more people aware of the Mountain View, California-based technology giant’s role in this trade.

Google could afford to at least live up the laws and customs of the American people and government, who roundly opposed to the production or sale of Dog or Cat fur or meat.

To: Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt.

Re: The Little Dead Dog Below Wrapped in Plastic which is available via Alibaba.com, and discovered via a sponsored link on Google’s home page

QUIZ: How do you suppose was this dog was killed?

A) In the most painless, “humane” way possible.

B) In a not-so-humane way, but not bad enough to cause you to lose any sleep.

C) In a way so inhumane and heartwrenching, you would not be able to watch it.

Dead Dog Wrapped in Plastic - Advertised By Google for Alibaba

The screenshots below were taken just a few minutes ago (June 9, 2020, China time), showing that Google continues to advertising DOG SKIN on its home page. One click on that ad takes one to Alibaba.com’s directory of dog skin and meat product sellers, which includes many pictures of dead and skinned dogs and puppies; the one below of huge cages full of dogs awaiting to be slaughtered is just literally one click away from Google’s home page.

Alibaba’s pledge to ban dog and cat fur/meat of is NOT BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY by Alibaba.

According to this press release by Animals Asia Foundation:

Animals Asia Foundation has welcomed a decision by Alibaba.com Limited, which runs the world’s largest online business-to-business e-commerce site, to ban subscribers from listing bear bile products, as well as the fur and meat of cats and dogs.

The ban applies to users of Alibaba.com (which has an international site in English and a Chinese site in Putonghua) and its separate sister operation, Taobao.com (a Chinese-language consumer e-commerce site that operates almost exclusively within China). [read more here]

UNFORTUNATELY, as of today, a full two weeks after this announcement, dog and cat fur and meat products are still being sold on Alibaba.cn in the same quantities as before. There is no obvious change on Alibaba’s Chinese-language site.

We’ll keep track of Alibaba’s progress on this front, and see if they can send a message of compassion by taking action to protect at least a few species of nonhuman animals.

Per usual, in the following screenshot, you can see that Google is still showing DOG SKIN ads on its Chinese home page, which lead to massive amounts of dog skin for sale on Alibaba’s platform.

A search for “dog skin” in Chinese turns up not only lots of horrific results, but also horrific AdSense sponsored links for Dog Skin. Google, as an American company, should you be profiting from Dog Skin trade?

A search for "dog skin" in Chinese turns up, per usual, a very prominent sponsored link to dog skin-selling platform Alibaba.cn. Following the link leads to the result below:

This Dog Skin Seller can supply 50,000 units of dog skin, and is based in Xingtai City, Hebei Province, epicenter of documented horrific cruelty to fur farm animals

NOTE: ALIBABA.COM, the platform selling this dog skin, is approx 40% owned by Yahoo (via their stake in Alibaba Group).

With the news that Google’s global advertising business will be getting into the living rooms of couch potatoes, I have a question:

Will Google be advertising Dog Skin and Cat Skin on American TV sets?

Since Google has no qualms advertising dog and cat skin online, I’m wondering if they’re going to bring this advertising revenue stream into American TV sets as well.

This fox paid the ultimate price to satisfy the greed of companies like Google, which uses its technology and brand to advertise this Earthling’s skin. This fox is from china, where it is perfectly normal and legal to skin animals alive.

A search for “fur” today turned up, per usual, an ad in the Google sidebar for fur from dog/cat-skin selling platform Alibaba, and today lots of the product just a single click away from Google’s home page was for weasel fur.

Do you think these animals were skinned alive or dead? In a country, China, without a single anti-cruelty law, it’s a pretty good guestimate that these skins were removed from sentient beings still conscious.

Dear Squirrels of the World:

You are in great danger. There are people who want your skin. They want to use your skin to create “luxurious” rugs, like the one here, made from skins of hundreds of Russian squirrels, and advertised via powerful online technology and advertising platforms created and owned by a company called Google.

Squirrel Fur Rug from Russia, advertised via Google's ad network. Seller's name is blacked-out, because they don't need any more help advertising their goods.

And you are not alone, in this danger: dogs, cats, mink, raccoon dogs, foxes, rabbits, bear,  wolves, leopard cats, chinchilla and many other species of animal are also facing this threat.

But I think there is hope: I think this trade in your skin can be slowed and possibly stopped. If just a few powerful companies and millions of individuals chose to take action on your behalf, some day, this danger to you could become a thing of history.

For now, you are in great danger. There are people who will trap you for your skin, and perhaps even breed you to create caged colonies of your descendants, to allow your kind to come into existence and mature and desire freedom, a freedom they will never know. Whether you are trapped or farmed, what is done to you is a great moral crime.

Humanity’s technological prowess is advanced to the stage where we no longer need to use the skins of other animals to create clothes for ourselves. We have been blessed (and cursed) with large brains and the ability to imagine and bring into existence new realities, realities that could liberate us from our predatory past, from our unconscious

And yet even now, our greed compels some of us to continue to profit from horrific cruelty, to prey on the weakest and  most defenseless inhabitants of our planets, to make many of them prisoners in tiny cages, whose only release shall come from the edge of a knife.

Even now, Google, by far one of the most advanced and powerful companies on the planet, chooses to sell your skin. A big powerful company like Google still needs to exploit the hides of squirrels to advance its profits.

Some day, I hope, brave companies like Google will realize they have the power to change this, to decide to put their profits and technology on the side of morality and ethical choices.

Until that day, please be safe. Stay away from humans. You are not safe from them

The graphic you see here pretty much tells the whole story our campaign — which we pray will be short-lived.

Would you ever have imagined that Google would take money DIRECTLY from people who skin dogs and cats alive? Not abstractly or indirectly or metaphorically. The dog you see here is surely no longer with us. His “producers” paid Google directly for the privilege to advertise on what is very likely the largest single fur advertising network on the planet: AdSense.

If Google sees nothing wrong with advertising dog skin on AdSense/AdWords, then this website should be of no concern to its Board of Directors, which includes prominent figures such as the President of Princeton University and President of Stanford University.

How would Stanford Students or Princeton Students react if the skins of dogs and cats were being sold on-campus via a Google “AdSense table”?

If you are a student or professor at either Stanford or Princeton, you could write a letter to your Presidents, who collectively form 20% of the members of the Google Board of Directors and ask them — POLITELY, COMPASSIONATELY, KINDLY, please! –  to ban fur from Google AdSense. Click the following links for their contact pages.

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Dear Googlers,

As a fan of Google, the intention of this site is to serve both as a protest and an archive of evidence of the role Google plays in a trade few would normally associate with Google.

With very few exceptions (all clearly noted), all the images of animals at FurIsEvil.org were found on the websites of Google AdWords/AdSense clients: dogs, cats, mink, raccoon dogs, foxes, rabbits, bear,  wolves, leopard cats, chinchilla, etc. Just look at the category sections in the sidebar of FurIsEvil.org to see a growing taxonomy of the kinds of animals whose skins are profiting Google.

I think you would be hard-pressed to find many companies whose reach into the world of fur is so omnipresent, and involves so many species of animals. Even your average pro-fur fashion magazine (itself an endangered species) will normal only advertise products who use skins from a few species of animals. And yet Google’s home pages (in the US, China and many other countries) and AdSense ads on thousands of your ad network “publisher” websites, allows the fur business a vast new marketing vehicle.

Via Google’s fur ads, I’ve learned that people make car seats out of cat skin. Lots of cat skin. I’ve learned that China’s fur farms are actively breeding Frankensteinian mixes of animals who are so genetically messed-up, they can barely stand.

My hope is that people at Google will be  reminded of the millions of animals trapped in cages all over the world.

My hope is that, if you need some inspiration to stop your involvement in this trade, all you need to do is look at the growing archive here of the faces and bodies of animals who are victims of our greed and brutality.

You have taken very brave, forward-looking moral stances on many social issues, and I believe you can take this step too.

If you lack inspiration to take this move, keep coming back to this site, and look at the faces and bodies of these sentient beings.

Thank you for your compassion,

Duke

Step 1: Be born. If you’re a wolf born in China, chances are you were born in captivity.

Step 2: Be raised inside your cage. Your life will spent in a cage just a little bit bigger than your body. You’ll try to get out. You’ll try to escape.

Step 3: Be skinned, usually alive. (This is NOT a myth. Live-skinning is standard in China.) After they skin you, you’ll still try to walk away. (This is what my fur farmer informants have told me.)

Step 4: Have your skin advertised to the human world via Google Adsense, and this is what your life amounts to:

Thanks to Google AdSense’s pro-fur policy, a well-meaning post about a Sacramento SPCA adoption day becomes yet another fur-selling opportunity for Google. Under the photo of this adorable little rescued dog from the Sacramento SPCA, there are Google ads for mink coats.

Frankly, I believe mink are just as adorable and worthy of our compassion as dogs.

If you’re curious to know where the mink coats advertised on this examiner.com page come from, well, Google can help in that department too, since their advertising clients include Chinese mink farms.

I just submitted this letter to the City Council of Mountain View, California, via their website contact form here. Below is the text of the letter.

Dear City Council of Mountain View, California:

I would like to suggestion a new city regulation to ban the sale and/or advertising of the skin or meat of dogs or cats, and to ban the operation of businesses who engage in the sale or advertising of dog and cat skin or meat products.

As an American citizen, born in California, I find it absolutely horrific that our companies are engaged in this trade.

Google currently advertises dog and cat skin and meat all over the world, from both its search home pages and via its Google AdWords/AdSense network, and I think the Mountain View city council could literally save hundreds of thousands of lives of dogs and cats by outright banning this kind of thing, both offline and online.

To see ample evidence of this reality, please see the website http://furisevil.org and simply click on the “dog” or “cat” categories. Every image of dogs or cats whose skin or meat is for sale there comes from a advertising client of Google.

I work with dog and cat rescue groups in China, and they are fighting a losing battle. Meanwhile, so-called cat-and-dog-loving countries like America and profiting from the horrific torture and live-skinning of dogs and cats.

This is a serious inquiry, and your action on this issue could send an important message of compassion to the world.