The first sentence sums up the rhetorical thrust of the entire piece: The mobilized world community support behind the Ogoni peoples struggles, the political action and analysis, the humanitarian call for a boycott of Shell and for corporate accountability, is dismissed by the corporate giant as an emotional reaction to the death of some one individual.

Truth resides elsewhere. To be concerned about the death is, well, understandable, perhaps even 'noble or well-meaning' but is most definitely beside the point, and if seen dispassionately and ultimately it's only a childish sense of empathy, a lapse into the swamp of unmanly emotions, the antipathy of the scientific, the progressive, the industrial,
the financially stable.