Fisherman's wife speaks out
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President Obama goes one-on-one with Larry King Thursday night to talk about the oil spill, economic turmoil and war. Don't miss the president on "Larry King Live," 9 p.m. ET tonight only on CNN.

Venice, Louisiana (CNN) -- Kindra Arnesen's husband often calls while he's out on a shrimping trip, so she wasn't surprised to hear her cell phone ring the night of April 29 while he was on an overnight fishing expedition.

However, this time, her husband, David, wasn't calling to tell her about the day's catch or to wish their children Aleena and David Jr. a good night. He was calling to tell her he was sick, and the strange thing about it, so were men on the seven other shrimping boats working near his.

"I received several calls from him saying, 'This one's hanging over the boat throwing up. This one says he's dizzy, and he's feeling faint. Everybody's loading up their stuff, tying up their rigs and going back to the docks,'" Arnesen remembers.

Cordovan Riki Ott Proposes 28th Amendment: Separation Of Corporation And State
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Catherine and Daily Musings,November 18, 2008 at 10:11 am
This just in from the network (author unknown) about the marvelous Dr. Riki Ott…

Every so often an idea comes along that rings with such clarity and purpose that it ignites the imaginations of millions of people. That spark of excitement becomes hope, hope becomes action, action becomes community, and that community grows to become a movement. Marine biologist, author, fisherma’am, and Exxon Valdez survivor, Dr. Riki Ott has such an idea.

BP Oil Spill Insider at the Gulf Emergency Summit video inside
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Ponies And Balloons
posted 25th June 2010 in Environment by The Green Man
Here’s a name you won’t hear from the corporate-sponsored news about the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: Kindra Arnesan. Here’s a phrase you won’t hear from the corporate-sponsored news about the Gulf oil spill: Ponies and Balloons.

What do Kindra Arnesan and ponies and balloons have to to do with the oil spill? At a gathering organized by the Gulf Emergency Summit, Arnesan, the wife of a fisherman in the Gulf of Mexico, explained that “ponies and balloons” is a code phrase used by BP executives and others in the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command to refer to fake clean-up operations that take place to create a false impression of progress in the cleanup of the oil spill. Here’s how Arnesan explains it, seen in the video below:

“First we gotta understand this phrase: ‘Ponies and balloons.’ Well, the only place I’ve ever seen ponies and balloons is at the circus. Right? At any rate, about a week and half in, I learned what ‘ponies and balloons’ meant. ‘Ponies and balloons’ means that every time an official is headed anywhere near here, they get a heads up.. All assets are deployed into the hardest hit areas. The official comes in, flies over, ‘good job, fellas’, pats ‘em on the back. When that official disappears out of the hardest hit area, so does 75%-80% of the response.

It’s happening. It’s happening every day. I’m watching it. I’ve seen it. I don’t agree with it. Anyone in this room’s not gonna agree with it. Anyone in our great nation’s not gonna agree with it. We are expendable to these people.”

Arnesan claims that she’s seen these things happening firsthand, after gaining security clearance to observe what’s happening on the inside of the Unified Command. So, why can’t you read about Ponies And Balloons in the mainstream press?

Lessons from the Exxon Valdez spill Rikki Ott
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–Riki Ott, PhD, has written two books on the Exxon Valdez oil spill impacts on people, communities, and wildlife, including the recently released Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. Any views expressed here are her own.–

I remember the words, “We’ve had the Big One,” with chilling clarity, spoken just over 21 years ago when a fellow fisherman arrived at my door in the early morning and announced that the Exxon Valdez had run aground in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and was gushing oil.

For the small fishing community of Cordova, Alaska, where I lived and worked as a commercial fisherma’am, it was our worst nightmare.

That nightmare is reoccurring now with BP’s deadly rig blowout off the Gulf Coast – with haunting parallels to the Exxon Valdez.

I was not at all surprised when officials reported zero spillage, then projected modest spillage, and then reported spill amounts five times higher than their earlier estimates.

Oil spill too much for William Allen Kruse skipper who committed suicide
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(June 24) -- Two weeks after he was hired by BP to help with the oil spill cleanup, William Allen Kruse killed himself.

The 55-year-old charter boat captain shot himself in the head Wednesday morning as he prepared to spend another day skimming oil off the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, clearing the spill that threatened to destroy his livelihood and community.

Kruse left no note, so it's impossible to know why he took his life. But those who knew him say the veteran fisherman and father of four was almost certainly the latest casualty in the gulf oil crisis, and a symbol of the spill's exacting human toll.

Elizabeth Cohen

Elizabeth Cohen is senior medical correspondent for CNN's health and medical unit. During her 17-year tenure at CNN, Cohen has reported award-winning stories and developed the popular "Empowered Patient" column on CNN.com.

During her years at CNN, Cohen has reported from Ground Zero following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; from a military hospital during Hurricane Katrina; from Virginia Tech following the shooting massacre in April 2007; and from California during the wildfires later that year. She reports daily on breaking medical news and consumer tips on CNN and on CNN.com. Her book, What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You, is due for publication in 2010.

Cohen has received several awards for her work, including a National Headliner, a Gracie, a Sigma Delta Chi, a Cine and two "Freddie" awards from the International Health and Medical Media Film Competition. Her stories have also been honored by the Association of Health Care Journalists, the Newswoman's Club of New York, and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She’s been recognized by the Mental Health America, the Arthritis Foundation, the American Academy of Dermatology, and the International Nurses Society on Addictions.

Before joining CNN in 1991, Cohen was associate producer of Green Watch, an environmental show on WLVI-TV in Boston. Before working in television, she was a newspaper reporter for States News Service in Washington, D.C., and for the Times Union in Albany, N.Y., where she won a Hearst Award.

A winner of the outstanding alumna award from Columbia College, Cohen received a bachelor's degree in history. She earned a master's degree in public health from Boston University, which honored her with its Distinguished Alumni Award.