Lol , look at the condescension towards people of color and natives , and you wonder why we call y ' all racist 🙄 Just why the British are so interested in obtaining American assistance on such sensitive intelligence isn ' t clear , though Whitehall is indeed nervous about protecting the nearby Falkland Islands . There , American and British oil companies hope to cash in on a potential offshore oil bonanza . Argentina , however , has long disputed British claims over the islands , and wants to secure the area ' s oil riches for itself . Much to the chagrin of Britain , Brazil is backing up Argentine claims and has developed its own innovative offshore oil technology . Another former British colony , Canada , hopes to benefit from the Five Eyes network in South America . Though Ottawa likes to portray itself as a respectful international player , Snowden ' s disclosures paint a very different picture . As I discussed earlier , the Canadian intelligence service C . S . E . C . has mushroomed in recent years and invests heavily in the collection of economic espionage . In Latin America , Canada backs up its financial interests by supporting backwards political elites . Like Britain and the U . S . , Canada apparently views Brazil as an up and coming threat and recently hacked into the Rousseff government ' s Ministry of Energy and Mines . Even as Anglo powers U . S . , Britain and Canada spy on poorer nations in South America , other junior partners are aggressively seeking out their own sphere of influence . Far away in the Pacific , Australia backs up Washington by keeping tabs on Asian countries . According to recent reports , Australian embassies are being secretly used to obtain data across the region as part of the Five Eyes network . However improbable , it also seems that remote New Zealand plays a role in the Five Eyes network . According to reports the Kiwis have two spy stations based at Waihopai and Tangimoana . At any given time , the U . S . posts three or four of its own analysts to work alongside New Zealand ' s Government Communications Security Bureau . Like Australia and Canada , New Zealand prides itself on being a noninterventionist power in stark contrast to the U . S . Moreover , for some time New Zealand has asserted an independent foreign policy by banning nuclear ships . Nevertheless , even the junior Kiwis have their own political and economic agenda centered on Polynesia , including Western Samoa , Tonga , the Cook Islands and Niue . After dislodging the native Maori people from their lands , New Zealand set its sights farther afield . According to one scholar , from the 1870 s imperial moves on the Pacific started in earnest . New Zealand ' s imperialists took the British and Dutch East India companies which , although established as trading companies , in effect exercised political power as their models . A trading company , the New Zealand and Polynesian Company , was to be established to develop Pacific trade . All sounds completely innocent , not at all like neocolonialism and Western imperialism to me !