I know there is some bad feelings about blanket bounties.

[Ceoran]

Maybe, but to export your goods you got to have someone to export to, which aynt happening if you make enemyes of the rest of sirius.

this has already been answered by Baconsoda I believe.

Exploding ships tend to kill people that are aboard, either naval ships in water or space ships in space.

Gateway is almost exclusively shipping, as is universal. Republican, despite having shipping in its name, does a lot of ship construction and ore refinement in addition to shipping.

I also wasn't aware that Samura's primary business was shipping, I thought they created high tech items, built machinery, and made traditional food.

I haven't seen any Republican station selling anything but low-profit cargo such as toxic waste or consumer goods, hence I never assumed they'd be producing anything. I know about Alster being a RS station, but that's nothing Samura would be interested in. I'm admittedly not very familiar with most Rheinland infocards. It has been a while since I've read any of them and then usually only those that were relevant for any of our trade runs.

As for Samuras primary business, it's hard to tell what's the primary part. However, keiretsu are often in control of every single step over the whole production process, why not distribution of the actual product too? I myself would assume that all part are equally important and as such there is no real primary business for a keiretsu.
wikipedia link on keiretsu

As for looking up the rumours as you asked before: well, Farmers and Hogosha both offer rumours stating how they are paid by Samura, which noone contested.
Two Farmers on Kagoshima furthermore state that they are sometimes attacking Kishiro shipments. Another Farmer on Kabukicho states that he's puzzled hearing rumours about farmers attacking kishiro, which implies said Farmer isn't attacking them. Yet the same farmer states clearly that not all the targets he's hitting are Synth Foods convoys, implying there's at least a 3rd targeted party.
However, neither of those rumours clearly states whether they are widely targeting them or just on few incidents.
What can be found is that the Farmers have very accurate information on the movements of their prey. Since we can't really give the Farmers a hint each time a gaijin enters Kusari, a bounty is probably as closest to a solution we can get.

edit: almost forgot: I'm not through with the rumours yet, but it's very tiring and it's past midnight, so I'll give it for now and live with what I found so far.

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