This evening's music features one of the great blueswomen, Etta James.

Here are some stories from tonight's post:

US Threatened Germany Over Snowden, Vice Chancellor Says

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said this week in Homburg that the U.S. Government threatened to cease sharing intelligence with Germany if Berlin offered asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden or otherwise arranged for him to travel to that country. “They told us they would stop notifying us of plots and other intelligence matters,” Gabriel said.

The Vice Chancellor delivered a speech in which he praised the journalists who worked on the Snowden archive, and then lamented the fact that Snowden was forced to seek refuge in “Vladimir Putin’s autocratic Russia” because no other nation was willing and able to protect him from threats of imprisonment by the U.S. Government (I was present at the event to receive an award). That prompted an audience member to interrupt his speech and yell out: “why don’t you bring him to Germany, then?”

Afterward, however, when I pressed the Vice Chancellor (who is also head of the Social Democratic Party, as well as the country’s Economy and Energy Minister) as to why the German Government could not and would not offer Snowden asylum — which, under international law, negates the asylee’s status as a fugitive — he told me that the U.S. government had aggressively threatened the Germans that if they did so, they would be “cut off” from all intelligence sharing. That would mean, if the threat were carried out, that the Americans would literally allow the German population to remain vulnerable to a brewing attack discovered by the Americans by withholding that information from their government.

This is not the first time the U.S. has purportedly threatened an allied government to withhold evidence of possible terror plots as punishment. In 2009, a British national, Binyam Mohamed, sued the U.K. Government for complicity in his torture at Bagram and Guantanamo. The High Court ordered the U.K. Government to provide Mohamed’s lawyers with notes and other documents reflecting what the CIA told British intelligence agents about Mohamed’s abuse.

In response, the U.K. Government insisted that the High Court must reverse that ruling because the safety of British subjects would be endangered if the ruling stood. Their reasoning: the U.S. Government had threatened the British that they would stop sharing intelligence, including evidence of terror plots, if they disclosed what the Americans had told them in confidence about Mohamed’s treatment – even if the disclosure were ordered by the High Court as part of a lawsuit brought by a torture victim. British government lawyers even produced a letter from an unnamed Obama official laying out that threat.

Netanyahu Unmasks Israel

For years, U.S. politicians have rejected allegations of Israeli racism and excused mistreatment of the Palestinians as a temporary necessity that would be fixed by a two-state solution. But Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has destroyed those arguments in his panic to keep his job.

Desperate to win reelection, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stripped off Israel’s mask and exposed the ugliness that has deformed his country over the past several decades. He abandoned the subterfuge of a two-state solution, exposed the crass racism that underlies Israeli politics, and revealed Israel’s blatant control of the U.S. Congress.

For years, these realities were known to many Americans, but – if they spoke up – they were condemned as anti-Semites, so most stayed silent to protect their careers and reputations. But – given Netanyahu’s brazen admissions – the American people may have little choice but to finally take notice of this troubling reality and demand a change in U.S. policy.

The truth is that the two-state solution has been a fiction for at least the past two decades, dying in 1995 with the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But the two-state illusion still served important political purposes both for Israelis, who would pay it lip service while continuing their steady encroachment on Palestinian lands, and for U.S. politicians who could point to the mirage as an excuse not to pressure Israel too hard on its human rights violations.

Yet, whenever any U.S. official actually tried to reach that shimmering oasis of a two-state solution, it would recede into the distance. Then, the Israelis would rely on their friends and allies in the news media and politics to blame the Palestinians. Now, however, the illusion of Israel seeking such an outcome in good faith has been lost in Netanyahu’s anything-goes determination to keep his office – a case of political expediency trumping strategic expediency.

From now on, there’s no pretending that “standing with Israel” doesn’t mean kneeling in an obsequious acceptance of Netanyahu’s cruelty toward the Palestinians and cooperation in an illegal and aggressive war against Iran.

The EU demonstrates its abiding commitment to demockery by vetoing the acts of one of its member governments to provide for the welfare of its citizens.

Don’t pass new anti-poverty law, commission tells Greece

At less than 24 hours’ notice the European Commission has vetoed a key law set to be passed by the Greek parliament tomorrow.

The so-called “humanitarian crisis bill” was set to provide free electricity for some households, and address poverty among pensioners and homeless families.

But in a communication seen by Channel 4 News, Declan Costello, director at the EC’s directorate for economic and financial affairs, has ordered the radical left-led coalition governemnt in Greece to stop. A planned law to allow tax arrears to be paid in instalments, set before the Greek parliament on Thursday, has also been vetoed.

The move comes as Alexis Tsipras, the Greek PM called for five-party talks at Thursday’s summit, and ahead of a critical decision by the European Central Bank over restoring borrowing facilities to Greek banks.

Adult interrogation tactics in schools turn principals into police officers

School administrators are being trained by the largest interrogation trainer in the world to extract confessions. This is only worsening the school-to-prison pipeline

Adult interrogation methods do not belong in the classroom, so why are school administrators throughout the United States being trained to use them on their students in order to extract confessions?

John E. Reid & Associates is the largest interrogation trainer in the world and teaches such methods to hundreds of school administrators each year. Last month, members of the Illinois Principals Association, for instance, could register for a “professional development” event on “Investigative Interviewing and Active Persuasion”. The School Administrators Association of New York State recently offered a workshop for administrators on this same topic, titled “Are you Sure They Are Telling the Truth”?

These administrators are learning the “Reid Technique”, which relies on “maximization” and “minimization” tactics in order to induce suspects to confess. Minimization focuses on reducing a suspect’s feelings of guilt, while maximization is designed to heighten suspect anxiety using confrontation. Both techniques are legal and both are incredibly coercive.

Controlled studies of Reid interrogation have documented that while such techniques may increase the likelihood that a guilty person will confess, they also increase the likelihood that an innocent person will as well. New research released in February found that the Reid technique causes witnesses to falsely implicate others.

Here's What Coal Mining Is Doing to Communities in the Navajo Nation

For sixty years, the billions of tons of coal found beneath Arizona's Black Mesa have powered the cities of the Southwest. But getting at all that coal has meant the displacement of more than 12,000 people of the Navajo Nation, one of the largest removals of Native Americans since the 19th century. For those that have remained, the mining process has compromised their health and their environment.

The mesa rises up from the dry Arizona landscape a few miles south of Kayenta Township, where Peabody Energy operates a mine that in 2013 produced nearly eight million tons of coal. The company proposed in May 2012 to expand its excavation, a plan that needs approval from the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation, and Enforcement (OSMRE). Locals are concerned because that would add 841 acres of land to the Kayenta Mine complex — which would displace even more Navajo and ensure continued air and water contamination for decades to come.