No, you are not alone in rightly assuming that the whole article is bullshit. The whole basis of the article is that East India company did not sell opium in th

No, you are not alone in rightly assuming that the whole article is bullshit. The whole basis of the article is that East India company did not sell opium in the west, but sold it to the Chinese. And that "similarly" Norway advocates for clean energy but grows wealthy by selling oil and gas. The comparison is illogical because the East India company was the poster boy of imperialism and corporate exploitation. It had its own private army of 250,000+ soldiers that was larger than the British army! It is the only instance I know of a corporate conquering a country (India) and establishing a British colony that it ran for decades. In fact, the exploitation was so perverse that the British government had to step in take control away from them to ensure that India (the jewel of the British crown) did not slip away from their hand because of the greed and cruelty of the East India company. (In the 19th century, they chopped away the hands of Bengal weavers as the clothes they produced were superior in quality, which made it difficult to sell the inferior machine produced British imported garments.) I'd also like to add that oil and gas are not going to fade away anytime soon as we shift towards "clean energy". There are a lot of petrochemical products that are are manufactured from the oil we drill.