For many weeks now I’ve been imploring the managers of Instablogs to stop accepting ads like the one shown in the screenshot above from my prior post about Russian tennis, from mail-order bride companies seeking to induce foreign men to purchase impoverished Russian women for their brides. I’ve refused to accept any payment from Instablogs as a result.

Russia is such a pathetic country that Google’s ad machine, which scrutinizes the text of a post to determine what ad would best suit it, can often only find mail-order bride companies when the post is about Russia. Instablogs uses Google’s ad machine to make money on this blog from our content.

Putting aside the obviously questions of morality and good judgment (foreigners who understand nothing about Russian culture buying helpless women), it’s the last thing Russia needs. Russia is already suffering from a critical population shortfall, with its population expected to drop by 50 million or more over the next 50 years. Pimping Russian women enslaved by cruel poverty (Russians earn on average only $4 per hour and men don’t live to see their 60th year) is exploitation of the worst kind, and I can’t be any part of it.

And for many weeks Instablogs has told me it would take action, yet done nothing. Yesterday the situation became intolerable. The ads used to be only text-based, but suddenly the colorful graphics banner appeared on my posts, and when I complained and heard only more of the same about delayed action, that was the last straw. I informed Instablogs that I can no longer contribute content to this blog until the matter is resolved. I’ve given Instablogs every chance to resolve the matter but it hasn’t done so. Game over.

Unfortunately, it also hasn’t resolved the matter I’ve previously documented of Instablogs contributor Eugene Ivanov telling libelous lies about the Washington Post, Oleg Kozlovsky and Yulia Latynina. After investigating the matter Instablogs concluded I was “absolutely right from the beginning” in staying that Ivanov had no evidence whatsoever to back up his ludicrously false statements (my post The Ivanov Report II documents them), but it has refused to sufficiently publicize that fact, retract them or apologize, apparently preferring to sweep the whole thing under the carpet. In my view, that won’t do our reputation any good. Therefore, even once the mail-order bride problem is solved (if it ever is) I won’t be contributing any further content to Instablogs until a proper retraction and apology are printed, just the way any professional newspaper would do. If we can’t follow the basic norms of good journalism, we can’t expect anyone to take us seriously. I live by them, and I expect any blog I write for to do the same.

Since I have many friends and readers on Instablogs, I thought I should explain why new content won’t be appearing. If you’d like to read more about developments in Russia, just click on over to my blog La Russophobe.