The explosive new documentary short Cyanide Beach has been released on Youtube. The 25-minute film, which premiered in Tucson, was made by longtime investigative journalist John Dougherty. Frances Causey, Co-Director of Heist: Who Stole the American Dream was a consulting producer on the project.

Cyanide Beach connects Vancouver, BC mining executives who want to build the controversial Rosemont open pit copper mine on the outskirts of Tucson, to a defunct Italian gold mining operation in Sardinia, Italy. Many of the same executives who want to build the Rosemont mine, directly contributed to an unfolding environmental and financial disaster in Sardinia.

“Cyanide Beach” provides insight on what could happen in Southern Arizona if the proposed Rosemont Copper mine is allowed to go forward.

Rosemont Copper Company intends to dump billions of tons of mine waste laced with mercury, lead, arsenic and other poisons on more than 3,000 acres of the Coronado National Forest. American taxpayers would receive no royalties for the five billion pounds of copper that would be mined over two decades. Rosemont intends to export all of the copper to overseas markets, where it will be refined and re-imported into the U.S.

Extensive supporting documentation for the film, including a timeline of the business history of the top officers in Augusta Resource, supported by thousands of pages of corporate disclosures, is posted at Dougherty’s InvestigativeMedia.com.

Episode 06: Tucson from Radical Resistance Tour on Vimeo.

Get a closer look at localized resistance based around ethnic studies, badass kids, border deaths, racist laws and the Derechos Humanos coalition.

The Radical Resistance Tour is an autonomous project by a group of Occupy Wall Street organizers. We're touring the United States and interviewing activists, people participating in direct actions, and people working to create a dual power model. We want to show people who aren't on the ground how people are being directly affected by decisions being made by corporations and governments that put profits over people and the environment. We want to inspire more people to fight back by featuring people who are already fighting back, and hopefully gain some shared wisdom by listening to how others are resisting.

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Former Arizona Gov. Raul Castro, who in the 1970s served as the state's first and only Hispanic governor, and U.S. ambassador to Argentina,was detained at a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint for 30 minutes in the triple-digit desert heat just a day after he underwent heart treatment. Castro was removed from his car and taken to a sweltering tent for inspection after his pacemaker apparently set off a radiation sensor on the highway, about 24 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.* "I don’t condemn them for doing a job,” said Castro, “but once I was identified and I was 96 years of age and told them I had medical treatment the day before, I expected a little more."

He spoke further to Arizona's The Republic:

"The sun was blazing on me," he said. "Once I identified myself, who I was, and that I had been to the doctor, I was under medical care, I have a pacemaker on my heart, (I would have thought) that they would have been more considerate and said, 'Keep on going.' But that didn't happen."

Castro's wife said of the incident, "It's traumatic, to say the least, for an old man," and that the Border Patrol officials need to use "more common sense."

The checkpoint incident happened on June 12, as Castro was headed from his home in the border town of Nogales to a luncheon in Tucson to celebrate his 96th birthday. The car was driven by Anne Doan, daughter of former Nogales, Ariz., Mayor Arthur Doan and a family friend of the Castros.

Doan, who is also a professor at the University of Arizona, was a bit more critical in a column she wrote for Nogales International:

"I was embarrassed as I watched the governor being needlessly treated like a nuclear threat, especially because they knew he had just had a treatment at Tucson Heart Hospital the day before. I felt he was being disrespected as a senior citizen, much less the amazing statesman that he is."

Alessandra Soler, executive director of the American Civil Liberties of Arizona, said Castro's experience with agents was not unique.

"This happens all the time in terms of these types of indiscriminate stops of individuals not suspected of any wrongdoing," Soler said, "Agents should have used discretion instead of relying solely on technology," in deciding to detain the former Governor.

* The ACLU notes that the US Border Control does "not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a 'routine search'" on areas within 100 miles of the "external boundary" of the US, an area which the ACLU estimates includes two thirds of the US population, or 197.4 million people.

UPDATE: Salon interviewed former AZ Gov. Castro, and apparently this was not his first run-in with the border patrol...or even the second! Full story here.