“The work of the ISIS is more cruel and brutal.” With those words, Filipino despot Rodrigo Duterte downplayed a Manila casino shooting that was, in its own way, cruel and brutal. Degenerate gambler Jesse Carlos ran amuck in Resorts World Manila, killing 37 people and wounding another 70. ISIS tried to claim credit for the attack (“Brother Abu al-Kheir al-Arkhabili was able to immerse among a gathering of Christian fighters in the Resorts World Manila in Manila where he carried out killing and hurting until he died as a martyr. About 100 Christians were killed or wounded.”) but, for once, all the signs pointed to a lone gunman. “As in previous incidents, this group is prone to claim and admit every criminal incident and label it as its own,” sighed Brigadier General Restituto Padilla. Indeed, analysis of surveillance footage showed Carlos working his way toward the storage area for the poker chips, firing systematically and more to cause fear than injury.
Carlos owed $80,000 to Resorts World and was looking to hold up the casino for $2 million, to the extent that his rampage had a purpose. He was a governmental tax specialist who’d also been living so suspiciously large that the failure to disclose certain assets cost him a government job in 2014. Carlos’ family asked casinos to ban him, to no avail. His suicide mission began with splashing gasoline around the table games area and setting it afire. He then shot it out with security before retreating to a hotel room and immolating himself. Along the way, he tried to steal $2 million in chips, to no evident purpose. Resorts World will be reimbursing the families of victims, to the tune of $20,000 apiece, it will also be looking at its fire-suppression system, which failed during the attack, causing most of the 37 fatalities, which occurred as guests and staff tried hide in a poorly ventilated VIP lounge. So, for all the harm Carlos caused, Genting Group’s negligence did worse.
There was a ripple effect at City of Dreams Manila, where owner Lawrence Ho promised to boost security, saying it was “certainly an issue we will buckle down on … We get news about what happens around the region. Occasionally, there are instability within geopolitics in the Philippines and the ASEAN region, so we take it very seriously.”
(Halfway around the world, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission fined Plainridge Park Casino for deficiencies in security staffing. According to one report, the Penn National Gaming property “was repeatedly non-compliant [12 times out of 46] with minimum security staffing requirements, leading to the civil penalty.” Penn didn’t protest the fine and is working with the MGC to resolve the issue.)
* Life’s good for shareholders of Twin River Casino in Rhode Island. For employees … not so much. Twin River ownership lavished $20 
million in stock buybacks on shareholders. At the same time, it cut health care benefits to workers, reductions that would more than triple costs borne by employees. Unite Here Local 26 isn’t taking this lying down and is talking strike. Twin River bosses can’t look to Providence for divine or governmental intervention. Politicians are rallying to Unite Here’s side, pointing out that they’ve made concessions in the past on the promise of quality pay for employees. It looks as though Twin River’s chickens have come home to roost.
