Intergalactic Summit

A few days ago, a message of great sorrow reached us - the respected and beloved stateswoman Karin Midular has passed away. Her leadership was admired across the cluster, and she was unquestionably one of the greatest diplomats and maintainers of peace in our times. In her death, our generation has lost a great visionary and a role model but hopefully her legacy will live on, and continue to inspire us and our children now and forever.

Tribal culture of Minmatar origin is by no means limited to the Republic - it is a strong and living component of the Federation as well. Midular was known as a someone who could shrink away the vast, galactic distances and bring together people of widely varying backgrounds, to understand their joys and sorrows. Her unique position as the prime minister of the Republic let her travel widely across the Federation, meet people and encourage them to be proud of their culture. For many, the Tattooed Lady was an icon of humanitarianism, multiculturalism and unity among all people.

It is curious that the identity of Midular's assailant has so far been kept from the public. One must ask, why is that? Wouldn't the revelation and the transferral of the judicial process to the Republic serve the interests of both nations better? If the assailant were say a mentally unstable person from either the Federation or the Republic, this would obviously be the case. Although the Supreme Court has expressed an opinion to the contrary, this is a trial of exceptional nature and should be treated as such.

Furthermore, as a consequence of all this seemingly unnecessary secrecy, there has been a sudden appearance of tensions between the Federation and the Republic. I find it hard to believe that the political dignitaries would willingly be straining these diplomatic relations without a good reason. One can ask, what could possibly motivate them to act in such a bizarre manner?

It is in our recent collective memory how the hostilities related to Caldari prime were brought to an end and it became a demilitarized zone. This, in my mind positive advance in the intergalactic peace process is by no means on a firm basis - there exists many groups of extremists, who would be satisfied with no less than opening the old wounds again and whose purposes would be served by the intensification of the hostilities. Therefore, although all this is speculation, the recent events seem to imply that the person behind this tragedy, now held in custody, was an enemy combatant, following the Caldari-nationalistic ideology, and that the authorities have chosen to not disclose his identity to prevent the escalation of violence on Caldari Prime.

It has been sad and disheartening to see how some ideologically motivated parties are now ruthlessly abusing Midular's untimely death to drive a wedge between her nation and its allies, and undermine everything she worked for during her life and career. I wish all the fellow admirers and friends of the late Karin Midular peace and healing. She was an advocate of peace in life and death. Her memory will always be with us.

A good question indeed. Why was such secrecy maintained regarding this assassin? And why was the price of this secret high enough to purchase the destruction of one allied fleet by another?

Whomever this shooter is, the Fed was willing to toss away their cozy relationship with the Matari, all over keeping him under wraps. Knowing how desperately FedMil depends upon Matari to crew their ships, it couldn't have been an easy decision to make.

Now... what would cause the Fed to so fervently, desperately protect the identity of the shooter, going so far as to blow away a Matari extraction fleet... what's the one much-worse thing they wanted to prevent by doing a less-terrible thing?

Ah... I think I may have figured it out.

Think I'll keep this one to myself, though.