The COO of the HSUS, Michael Markarian, has a blog on the Huffington Post.
And the blog is peddling fur.
Let me rephrase: A Blog by the COO of the Humane Society of the United States is selling fur.
There is no excuse for this.
There is no excuse for continued inaction about this issue.
The HSUS has been aware of Google’s role in the fur trade for almost 6 months now. But they have continued to remain silent about it. They continue to blast Chinese fur farmers while letting American companies like Google and media outlets like Huffington Post and the New York Times off the hook.
If the HSUS cares about the fur animals of the world, its COO would not allow his blog to become a fur-selling platform.
I don’t see why Huffingon Post is any morally different from a fur farmer who skins an animal alive. They’re both making money off the same act of violence against a sentient being.
I think the HSUS should immediately sanction the Huffington Post until the Huffington Post stops selling fur for Google’s clients.
And, if perchance, Markarian or the HSUS gets paid anything from the HP for blogging there, then HSUS is now in the fur trade too!
If you doubt Google profits from dog or cat skins, look in the header and ask yourself what you see. This is a WYSIWYG campaign. ("What You See Is What You Get.") 
7 responses so far ↓
1 SarahHSUS // Aug 15, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Google ads are not controlled by the HSUS they appear based on where the advertiser wants them to appear
2 Adam Durand // Aug 15, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I’m glad that HSUS can put their anti-fur message on HuffPo. I think it would be a shame to withdraw their message over Google’s advertising policies.
3 duke // Aug 15, 2009 at 5:18 pm
I think it would be a shame if they remain silent.
4 duke // Aug 15, 2009 at 5:21 pm
HSUS could influence HuffPo to remove the fur ads from Michael Markarians blog posts.
Not to do otherwise would be an insult to the people whose donations pay his rather large salary.
5 SarahHSUS // Aug 15, 2009 at 7:58 pm
@Duke Google ads are often run through content match, for example, the fur companies pay for the ads to run on pages etc related to fur. As this article was about fur, most likely the ad appeared because the content matched. The only way to prevent that from happening would be to not allow google to run ads period, as content matched ads can’t really be regulated.
6 duke // Aug 16, 2009 at 5:28 am
@Sarah:
Incorrect. There are many ways for both Huffington Post and Google to stop fur ads on HuffPo:
1. Google could ban fur ads.(As it does anabolic steroids, guns, miracle cures and other categories of verboten ads.)
2. HuffPo could demand that Google stop serving fur ads of any kind on its site and require that Google either do so or lose their business.
But, I admit my favorite is your suggestion. Except I would simply call it a boycott, based on having an ethical policy on what advertising allowed to appear on HuffPo and on HSUS Michael Markarian’s blog there.
As is, it seems clear that both HuffPo and HSUS are basically comfortable with Google and HuffPo profiting from fur ads on HSUS COO Michael Markarian’s blog.
Apparently, the HSUS is willing to do anything for animals as long as it doesn’t hurt Google’s bottomline.
I’m in China, literally a few miles from Raccoon Dog farms and I think it is disgusting that HSUS is not more upset about this.
Why are you writing me, and not writing Huffington Post?!
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