DONALD TRUMP – A COWARD AND A TRAITOR

January 7, 2026
Uncategorized

By John McLean

Upon becoming President in January, 2025, Donald Trump engaged in a tirade of playground type insults against our fellow dominion of Canada which, unlike the United States, is a beacon of genuine freedom and democracy; Canada never had slavery and, like Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and India, fought for freedom in both world wars from the first day to the last.

In the war against the Kaiser’s totalitarianism and military aggression the United States stayed out of the fighting, making money out of trading with both sides, until almost the very end. Their government’s main reason for at last coming in on the side of the victims (Belgium and France) seems to have been to get a big place for themselves at the eventual peace conference so as to be in a position to help America’s big corporations get a slice of the post-war business in Europe. Similarly in the Second World War America stayed out of the fighting, again making money out of trading with both sides, until the Japanese forced them into the war by their sneaky and unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbour.

France had traditionally been known as America’s “oldest friend”. However, when France was fighting for its life and eventually fell to defeat in 1940, the United States sent neither a single gun nor even a spade to help its “oldest friend”.

At the same time the United States was such a “friend” to Britain that, when the latter was being bombed every night by the Luftwaffe and was on the verge of being defeated, the U.S. government required that Britain’s purchases of planes and other war equipment from America had to be paid in cash on an adverse exchange rate. If Britain required expanded purchases, they had to pay cash up front for the construction costs of expanding American factories where these things were to be made – to cover “structural and equipment costs”. They drained every ounce of gold out of Britain and it was only when Britain’s foreign exchange and gold reserves were utterly empty that the Americans came in with trumpets blowing and announced “Lend-Lease” – they would pass us equipment but in return would take 99 year leases on military and naval bases in British colonies such as Bermuda and some Caribbean colonies.

In New Zealand there has always been an understandable respect and gratitude for the way that this country was saved from enemy invasion in the Second World War by the U.S. Marines in their brave fight at Guadalcanal and elsewhere and nothing should detract from this. However, Washington’s motive was not to save the people of Australia and New Zealand from the Japanese but to win the war that America was at last engaged in. If Pearl Harbour had not been bombed one can only speculate as to whether this nation of money-makers, that remained unmoved by the defeat of France and the bombing of England in 1940, would have come to our aid. In 1942 soft-on-Communism Roosevelt is on record as saying, “I would rather lose New Zealand, Australia or anything else than have the Russians collapse”.1

Donald Trump is the last in a long line of unscrupulous American Presidents who have run the country not for the good of its people or the world but in the interests of powerful forces – large corporations – that finance the two main parties and, in some cases, for the benefit of foreign (even hostile) governments. According to two former KGB agents, Alnur Mussayev (ex-6th Dept. of KGB) and Yuri Shvets, Donald Trump was recruited in 1987 as an “asset” for the Soviet Union and was given the code-name “Krasnov”. An “asset” is not an active agent but a reliable friend who can be counted on to do favours from time to time for Russia.

At the time he was recruited (1987) Trump was in Moscow seeking finance for his tottering property empire. Therefore he was vulnerable to “going over to the other side” – “we shall bail you out of your difficulties in return for you helping us in the future”. The trip to Russia was well planned. The previous year he had a meeting in Trump Tower with the Soviet ambassador, Yuri Dubinin, who invited him to Moscow. This was at the height of the Cold War. The trip was arranged by the KGB affiliated Intourist bureau.

Upon his return to New York from this trip Trump purchased three full page advertisements in the New York Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post newspapers at a cost of $94,801 to try to swing American foreign policy Moscow’s way. The ads criticised how America was being “exploited” by NATO and demanded a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Japan and South Korea – things that Moscow had always wanted. Whether it was Trump who paid in his personal capacity or as an agent of the KGB is not known but, in view of his then parlous financial state, it would appear that the Russians paid Trump who then paid the newspapers in his own name.

Alnur Mussayev has alleged that Putin holds compromising documents and videos of Trump on his visit to Russia while President de Sousa of Portugal has stated: “The top leader of the world’s foremost superpower is, objectively, a Soviet or Russian asset. He operates as an asset……objectively the new American leadership has strategically benefited the Russian federation”.2

Yuri Shvets told the Guardian in 2021 that Donald Trump had been “cultivated as a Russian asset…..and proved so willing to parrot anti-West propaganda”3 – a habit he has not grown out of. “His narcissism made him a natural target…..he was cultivated over a 40 year period, right up through his election [in 2016],” wrote Edward Lucas of the Centre for European Policy Analysis.4

In the words of Yuri Shvets, “For the KGB it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable, intellectually and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery”.

It was certainly a good investment from Russia’s point of view. At the time of his election as President in 2016 his campaign and transition team had 272 known contacts and at least 38 known meetings with Russian linked operatives.5 None were reported to the proper authorities and Trump and his team tried to cover them all up by their usual method of telling lies.

Prior to his first campaign for the presidency in 2016 Donald Trump consistently praised Putin as a strong leader. “I spoke indirectly and directly with President Putin who could not have been nicer”, he boasted.6 However, when it became potentially vote-losing he changed his tune. “I never met Putin. I don’t know who Putin is”, he lied during the campaign.7

Krasnov put himself further into Putin’s power in December, 2021, when Trump Media was on the verge of financial collapse and suddenly two loans totalling US$8 million were paid to it from obscure Putin connected entities. $2 million was paid by Paxum Bank, part owned by Anton Postolnikov, a relation of Aleksandr Smirnov, a former Russian government official who shortly afterwards was appointed to run the Russian shipping company, Rosmorport. The other $6 million was paid by an ostensibly separate entity, ES Family Trust, whose director was the director of Paxum Bank at the same time.8 – “Hey, Vladimir old friend, you help me get this $8 million and I’ll be your liege man for ever more”.

Trump’s services to Russia continue as – unbelievably and unthinkably for the President of a country that is allegedly committed to democracy and non-aggression – he has turned decades of U.S. foreign policy on its head by siding with Putin, the aggressor, and vilifying and undermining Ukraine, the victim. Despite the fact that Putin has broken 25 ceasefire agreements since Russia started its aggression against Ukraine in 2014, and that Russian bombers and drones target residential areas of Ukraine – even hospitals – virtually every night, Trump has shown on several occasions that his heart is with Putin and not with Ukraine, whose own planes and drones target aerodromes and military installations inside Russia and not civilian areas.

In November, 2025, Trump put forward a “peace plan” for Ukraine which was almost identical with one that Putin had presented and which required Ukraine to hand over vast swathes of its territory to the aggressor, including land that the Russian Army had not yet reached in its three year invasion. This, of course, was not a “peace plan” but a surrender document. In pushing this cowardly and brutal plan Trump argued that Russia had “the upper hand”, which was a lie since the Russian invasion has conquered so little of Ukraine’s vast territory that, at the present rate, it would take them more than a hundred years to capture the whole country.

In the same diatribe Trump screamed that Zelensky and the Ukraine government must “play ball” (do as they’re told). In other words might was to prevail over right. “Zelensky will have to get on the ball and start accepting things,” said Trump.9 Zelensky was being pressured into accepting considerable territorial loss in return for unspecified U.S. “security guarantees” that would not be worth the paper they’re written on since Putin had already broken 25 ceasefire agreements in respect of Ukraine and he knows that, with his man Krasnov in the White House, there would be no meaningful American response to him breaking yet a further agreement. There is only one way for a genuine and lasting peace in the Ukraine and that is for complete unity on the part of the entire Western world in ceasing all trade and business contacts with Russia such as would bring its tottering government and economy to its knees and convince them to get right out of Ukraine to which they have no legitimate claim.

That was how President Reagan ended the Cold War; by using America’s economic superiority he challenged the Soviets to an arms race that they could not win and so that was the end of the Soviet Union. The same could be done to-day to end Russia’s ridiculous and unjustified invasion of her neighbour but it will never happen so long as Trump is President as he is both too cowardly and too compromised to stand up to Putin.

Trump’s efforts to undermine NATO, which has been responsible for keeping the peace in Europe ever since it was created in the late 1940s, is also an aid to Putin, who would like NATO to self-destroy so as to make it easier for him to make further aggression into Europe beyond Ukraine. The Russians must be very happy with their Krasnov. In the light of the hold that Russia apparently has over Krasnov (some form of blackmail?) it can be said that he is not serving the interests of the United States but those of its enemies.

This is not “conspiracy theory” as how else can his unprecedented actions be explained other than him being beholden to the West’s enemies who have a hold over him?

On two occasions this congenital liar and historically illiterate nincompoop has stated that it was Ukraine, the victim, who started the current war and not the invader, Russia. This is the same as saying that it was Poland that started the Second World War and not Germany. And yet Trump boasts “I’m supposed to be a very smart person…..I have vast knowledge!!!!”10

In the words of Rafael Behr, writing in the Guardian on 13th August, 2025, Trump’s swallowing of Putin’s lies is a bigger threat to peace than Russia’s drones. “The challenge for Zelensky and his allies,” wrote Behr, “is handling a U.S. President who talks about war and peace in terms detached from any moral, historical or strategic context. Trump draws no meaningful distinction between a settlement that allows Ukraine to thrive as an independent state and one that satisfies the appetite of a Russian president bent on conquest. He values two kinds of deals – those that make him richer, and those that allow him to luxuriate in the status of a great deal maker” – even if that involves abandoning
America’s allies and interests.

The world has been through all this before in 1938 when Britain’s Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, appeased Hitler with a boundary change, giving Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Germany (just like the parts of Ukraine that Trump talks of ceding to Russia). Chamberlain said that his appeasement of Nazi Germany was to prevent excessive expenditure on armaments. Trump also talks along these lines, wanting to decrease America’s armaments that, more than anything else, have guaranteed world peace since 1945. And the end result of Chamberlain’s appeasement was the outbreak of world war in 1939 – just as any appeasement of Putin over Ukraine will only whet his appetite for further invasions of small countries in the free part of Europe, starting with the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and including Moldova and Georgia in the south. As Churchill wrote, “The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small State to the wolves is a fatal delusion”.11

Historically Russia has committed aggression against all its neighbours over the centuries but that is something that Trump, who is not known ever to have read a history book, would be unaware of. And anyway the need for Krasnov to please his “godfather” in Moscow overrides everything else.

Russia has always had an historic hostility to individual freedom and democracy. Every American President since 1945 has recognised this and been wary of Soviet/Russian trickery. Except Trump who has not done anything that Putin does not like but has done some serious things to please him, e.g. obliging Moscow’s aim of dividing the United States from its traditional allies in NATO.

Putin has even threatened Europe with war – something he is unlikely to have done without Trump intimating that America’s support of the European members of NATO is much less than it was under any other President. Trump is only a “fair weather friend” to Europe and other democracies. He has attacked Europe’s values and government systems – criticisms that he has never applied to Russia. He spurns America’s traditional friends from Canada to Europe while defending and even heaping praise on Putin’s brutal rule in Russia.

“Trump is at Putin’s little finger”, said Sir Richard Shirreff, the former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of  NATO.12 He suggested that Trump was eyeing potential business opportunities for himself and his family in the Russian occupied areas of Ukraine – or even in Russia itself – and called the situation “pretty shameful”.

Such a family enriching goal is likely as Trump is running the U.S. government primarily for the benefit of himself, his greedy and seedy family and other hangers-on. Take for example the on, off, on again, off again tariffs that sent the New York stock market up and down as they were variously announced, increased, decreased and revoked. The main purpose was to manipulate the stock market so that the Trumps could make killings by buying or selling in anticipation of the rise or fall caused by his ever changing mind on tariffs for particular countries.

What makes the whole thing more odious is the contrast between Trump’s craven subservience to Putin and his bullying of less powerful groups – smaller countries and even the homeless on the streets of Washington D.C. Caving in to the strong while bullying the weak is, of course, the mark of the coward. Deep down and in spite of all the boasting and bullying Trump is – and always has been – a first class coward.

He dodged the draft for Vietnam FIVE TIMES. Four of these were deferments on educational grounds but, after leaving university, that no longer held and so, frightened of going in to the Army, Trump made up a fake injury because “I wasn’t going to Vietnam” he told his lawyer, Michael Cohen.13

The injury that he invented was bone spurs on his heel. There were no medical records of this and no surgery because there was no injury – just a selfish coward who lacked the courage and patriotism to serve in the armed forces of which he is now Commander-in-Chief!!

The United States has had many crooks as President but it wasn’t until the arrival of Krasnov in the White House that it suffered a real live traitor in its highest office. His continuance in office is a threat to the security of all the countries of the West that value freedom, truth and the principled opposition to totalitarianism and military aggression that has prevailed in the West since the Second World War.

The Western world and Western values are too precious to be influenced by a traitor like Krasnov who, because of America’s enormous power, has the means and the will to tip things Russia’s way – as he is doing in Ukraine and will do to other victims of Russia’s aggression in the future because of the hold that Russia has over him. He is not just America’s problem but a problem for the whole Western world – a public menace who is actively upholding Russia’s aggression and doing the Kremlin’s dirty work for it at every turn.

References:
1 FDR; A Biography, Ted Morgan, Page 637
2 Kiev Independent, 29 August, 2025
3 Foreign Policy publication, 10 March, 2025
4 Ibid
5 Guardian, 29 January, 2021
6 Wikipedia
7 Ibid
8 Wikipedia
9 Guardian, 9 December, 2025
10 Guardian, 9 December, 2025
11 The Second World War, Vol. I, P. 273
12 Dagens.com 29 November, 2025
13 Military Times, 27 February, 2019

Maori population changes in the nineteenth century

November 24, 2025
, , , , Maori, Uncategorized

By John Robinson

Significance today of historic and pre-historic population estimates

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, approaching 200 years since the formation of New Zealand, the country is divided by race. Claims for special treatment and compensation are based on a narrative that colonisation brought great harm to Maori. This is supported by a picture of little population change during the murderous tribal wars and a rapid decline following 1840.

The analysis outlined here corrects that picture, describing a major population decline and social breakdown during the tribal wars of the first decades of the nineteenth century, which produced a demographic deficit that resulted in further population decline which was apparent in early census counts, before a steadily recovery throughout the fifty years following the formation of a national government.

A population model is here based on three identified information sources: the census data from 1856-57 to the end of the century, the 1952 review by Nancy Pearce in her Victoria University M.A. thesis, The size and location of the Maori population, 1857-96, and the estimate of losses in battles by Professor James Rutherford (Note on Maori casualties in their tribal wars 1801-1840, in the James Rutherford papers, 1926-1963, Special Collections, The University of Auckland Library).

The intent here is to present the information in a simple form, to move away from the current set of unjustified assertions and build on established facts, and so to provide the reader with a clear alternative analysis to assist a search for a deeper understanding.

Census data from 1857/58 and adjustments

National census counts of the Maori population commenced in 1856/1857. After a delay due to the wars of rebellion, these continued from 1874. The initial value reported for 1896 caused some dismay as it suggested a significant drop in Maori numbers, to 39,854 from 41,993 in 1891. That was later recognised to have been a poor count, and the 1945 table of census counts gave a revised estimate of 42,113.

A careful review by Nancy Pearce resulted in several well-founded adjustments, which are used in the following calculations. Most importantly, the first 1857/58 census count of 57,049 was adjusted to 59,700. Demographer Ian Pool presented a second set of less clear adjustments in his 1991 book, Te iwi Maori: New Zealand population past, present and projected.

The period covered by census counts commenced with a very negative population distribution (Table1), a shortage of both young and females which alone provides an explanation of the population decline. There was a steady recovery of that demographic deficit and reduction of the population decline. Stability was reached around 1890, followed by a population growth that has continued since.

Table 1. Proportion of young in the population and the ratio of males to 100 females for Maori in nineteenth century censuses.

The obvious cause is female infanticide, which had been frequently observed, with many references to this practice in early reports. Pool wrongly claimed the opposite, that “there is little sound evidence … to support the idea of widespread infanticide, male or female”, which has been accepted in many recent accounts.

An estimate back to 1840

Local and regional counts prior to the first census report similar shortages of young and females. These include an 1844 enumeration of Waikato Maori by Church of England missionaries, Wellington counts of 1845 and 1850, and an 1851 count in a number of pa near the Bay of Islands.

The data from the Waikato 1844 survey give a clear indication of the dire situation around 1840, and of the steady improvement thereafter. This is shown by a graph of the ratio of children to adult females given by Pool, with an increase from an extremely low 70 children per 100 adult females in 1844 to around 100-120 in 1874-1891, and further to 160 in 1930.

It is evident that the demographic imbalance (shortage of young and females), and thus the resulting population decline, existed from 1840, and a reasonable assumption is that the rate of population loss between 1840 and 1856/57 was of a similar magnitude to that measured between the first two census counts of 1856/57 and 1874. Since the actual figures are used in the count back, any impact from disease or other causes is included.

The model, accepting the review by Pearce and making that assumption of similar rate of change back from 1856/57, then gives an estimate of 71,600 for the 1840 Maori population. The choice of Pearce’s revised population estimate for 1856/57 is significant. Use of the original census figures suggests an 1840 population of 70,000; use of Pool’s revision suggests an 1840 population of 80,000.

These differing estimates show the variation in possible choices and assumptions in deriving an estimate of the 1840 Maori population from the reported measured data. To this can be added the possibility of a greater rate of loss in the period 1840-1856/57 (as suggested by the 1844 Waikato count), which would most probably move the 1840 estimate to around 75,000. This discussion thus points to a possible range of 71,000-75,000. Further estimates here continue to follow the model best estimate of 71,600.

From 1840 back to 1800, through the tribal wars

While there had been frequent wars between tribes previously, there was a period of particularly destructive and widespread fighting in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The horrors of those times are described in my 2020 book, Unrestrained slaughter: the Maori musket wars 1800-1840. After battle, neither sex was spared; women, infants and children were ‘barbarously devoured’ and at times whole groups were wiped out.

There are many accounts and records of the battles fought and the resulting disruption as conquered tribes moved across the country, often to spread the killing and conquer other tribes in their turn. As Ron Crosby wrote in his 1999 book, The Musket Wars – A History of Inter-Iwi Conflict 1806-45: “Of an estimated 100,000 – 150,000 Maori living in New Zealand at or around 1810, by 1840 probably somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 had been killed, enslaved or forced to migrate as a result of the wars.”

A more comprehensive count of battle deaths has been provided by Rutherford. That estimation is both thorough and cautious; he comments that: “Any calculation of this sort involves considerable risk of error. Maori evidence, based on oral tradition, has been treated far more cautiously than R.A.F claims for German aircraft shot down in the Battle of Britain; all large claims have been greatly reduced.” Rutherford’s table of battle casualties lists both those killed and total battle casualties.

Battles and probable casualties in the intertribal wars

In order to take account of the full extent of loss of life, including those killed following battle, the estimates of ‘probable casualties’ are used in the calculations.

As well as the loss of life in the wars, the model includes the impact of the demographic deficit observed in the later part of the century. This is taken in 1840 to be that of the years following. Since it is impossible to have had such a population decline continuing unbroken far back in time, this is assumed to have developed during the period of extensive warfare and is taken as zero in 1800, with a linear change in the rate of loss between 1800 and 1840.

This indicates a population decline of 66,000 between 1800 and 1840. This is close to other estimates: Rutherford suggests a population loss of 65,000, Buck an estimate of 80,000 killed in battle or died of causes incidental to the wars, while other early estimates were around 60,000 to 90,000 deaths.

This model calculation produces the following graph, with a population in 1800 of 137,500. Pool reports an estimate by Rutherford of 155,000-166,000 in 1800.

An alternative account: denial of serious impact of tribal wars and claims of an immediate harm of colonisation

Although Pool noted estimates of high losses in the tribal wars, he set these aside. “The ethnographer Percy Smith was responsible for the claim that there were 80,000 deaths over the first third of the nineteenth century, from both direct and indirect mortality caused by warfare. Yet over 100,000 persons could have been expected to have died over this 30-year period in the ‘normal’ course of events, with or without wars.”

This process of insisting that we should ignore the decline during the musket wars opened the way to imagine a largely successful Maori society throughout that turbulent period, followed by subsequent collapse, when: “The rapid Maori population decline after 1840 resulted from the increasing number and density of the Pakeha population.” This claim has become accepted as in Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New Zealand: “Very high levels of mortality meant that the Maori population declined for most of the 19th century. The most rapid decrease occurred between 1840 and 1860, when the Maori population dropped by up to 30%.”

This version of Maori demographics is shown most graphically in a 2014 Auckland University Press publication, The healthy country? A history of life and death in New Zealand, written by “internationally renowned scholars” Alistair Woodward and Tony Blakely. Their figure 5 references Pool 1991, but gives very different numbers from those found in that publication which were population estimates of 80,000 in 1840 and 115,000 at contact. I have been unable to establish where they got their numbers; in the words of Simon Chapple when considering estimates of the contact population, these were “Numbers from Nearly Nowhere”.

The estimates of early populations (read from that graph) are: 150,000 in 1769, 110,000 in 1840, 100,000 in 1844, and 58,000 around 1854-1856 (a little higher in 1854). This suggests a sudden decrease of 42% over 10 years between 1844 and 1854. There is no explanation for any such catastrophic event; there was no great epidemic with such a high loss of life in those years. As Pool reports: “it is worth stressing that there is no record of the great apocalyptic diseases … striking New Zealand in any demographically significant way”. The claimed population collapse is nowhere explained. In fact, it did not occur, having been artificially constructed by the unrealistically high estimates of the 1840 population.

The great harm brought by colonisation is a myth – it simply did not happen. Yet this false version of history is widely accepted.

THE SAD PASSING OF COMMON SENSE

October 26, 2025
, , , , Uncategorized

To-day we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as knowing when to come in out of the rain, why the early bird gets the worm, life isn’t always fair, and maybe it was my fault.

Common sense lived by sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you earn), and reliable parenting strategies (adults and not children are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a six year old boy being charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and teachers being fired for reprimanding unruly students only worsened his condition.

Common sense lost ground when parents ceased disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer paracetamol, sun lotion or a sticky plaster to a student but they were prohibited from informing the parents when a student got pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband, churches became businesses, and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home, and the burglar could sue for assault.

His condition worsened when it became obvious that nobody is responsible for what they do but we are all responsible for what somebody else did generations ago, where a baby born into the world automatically has pre-existing grievances against another baby born at the same time because of what ancestors allegedly did centuries ago, and where those who call for equal rights for all citizens (“One Law For All”)  are damned as “racists”.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live after a woman failed to recognise that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap and was promptly awarded a large settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust, by his wife, Discretion, his daughter, Responsibility, and his son, Reason. He is survived by three step-brothers, “I know my Rights”, “Someone Else is to Blame”, and “I am a Victim”. Not many attended his funeral because so few realised that he was gone.

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