“you can have a premium player make US$200,000 or US$250,000 a single bet. A typical gambler - we're talking US$50,000 to $US200,000 per trip. And these guys make anywhere between 10 to 25 trips a year"
2. "Old School"
“However, again, you can for example go old school and wear an expensive watch, pay for it in Shanghai, get across the border & go to a jewellery store and get a refund or maybe get 97% of the money back"
3. "God help the Casinos"
"Perhaps we're going to go that way until the government of China will force the casinos to go use the digital renminbi, in which case, God help the casinos.”
4. Corrupt Officials VIP Gamblers
According to a 2018 study by the Macau Polytechnic Institute, Chinese government officials & executives of state-owned enterprises account for 1/2 of Macau's VIP gamblers, contributing to 2/3 of Macau's gaming revenue.
5. Well worth watching that video for insights
The cross-border “crime syndicate” led by Chau had 199 shareholders, 2000 promotional agents & more than 80,000 gamblers across China, many of them state officials..
This was where, in 1999, Broken Tooth Koi was jailed for 13 years for illegal gambling, loan-sharking and the attempted murder of chief of police Antonio Marques Baptista with a car bomb
Alvin Chau Cheok-wa was the chairman of Macau’s biggest casino junket operator Suncity Group Holdings, which operated VIP rooms in all 6 of Macau's licensed casino operators, Wynn Macau, Sands China, MGM China, SJM Holdings, Melco Resorts & Galaxy
19. Debt Collecting
“It’s not possible, in practical terms, to do away with the triads when it comes to Macau’s casino industry.
Despite Boris Johnson's recent "Panic Boosting" by claiming "one death" caused by Omicron, yet suspiciously refusing to supply any further details: theguardian.com/world/2021/dec…
The good news is that Russians with Omicron show only minor symptoms of infection tass.com/society/1374977
Fauci Screams Boost!
"The somewhat encouraging news is that preliminary data showed that when you get a booster for example, the third shot of an mRNA, it raises the level of protection high enough that it does do well against the omicron."
"Most of the 43 people infected with Omicron variant in the US had mild symptoms but most had been vaccinated & 14 of them had already had booster doses, CDC reported"
@stuartjdneil@PhilippMarkolin I admit that of late my focus has been on lab animals, but from the very beginning, I also asked questions about the market animals, and not just on Twitter.
The main actors in this whistle-blower detour down the lab-leak rabbit hole include the group of internet activists known as DRASTIC, which published the documents
3. Whistleblower
Backing the headline were documents that DRASTIC said came from the unidentified whistle-blower. They showed that EcoHealth Alliance in 2018 applied for a federal grant to study bat coronaviruses with three other US research groups
1. The mature adult—balanced, reasonable, facing the world & the self with a steady eye—doesn’t need drugs....
2. Except for..
Except for one of those martinis every now and then or 3 or 5 of them and a line of blow if he’s going out dancing later and some champagne and a joint an a fistful of Tylenol, Bloody Marys, Valium, and. . .what the hell, who’s got the Ecstasy?