With sanctions being used as a political weapon of choice by the West, Iran is turning the tables on Europe, pledging to withhold on gas supplies. The pledge made by Leader of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all major decisions, comes at a crucial time. Iran is heading to a decisive round of nuclear negotiations, with sanctions being at the heart of contention.

"If sanctions are supposed to be the way, it is the Iranian nation which will sanction them (Europe) in the future," Ayatollah Khamenei has said. "The hapless Europe needs gas and based on existing explorations, we possess the biggest share of the world's gas reserves," he added.

Political analysts say Ayatollah Khamenei's statements serve as a warning to the West, signaling that Iran will not accept any dictate in the talks. Europe and the US have been using the weapon of sanctions to twist Iran's arm over its nuclear program. Ayatollah Khamenei said, "Iran holds the world's largest oil and reserves combined and when the time comes we will sanction them and the Islamic Republic is capable of doing that."

According to statistical energy reviews, Iran holds the world's largest proven natural gas reserves, at 33.8 trillion cubic meters or 18.2% of the total proven reserves. The country's proven oil deposit is estimated 157 billion barrels, the fourth-biggest after Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and, Canada.

Germany rejected Greece's 6-month bailout extension request, according to German Finance Ministry spokesman. The two sides have until Friday to agree on a deal, otherwise, Greece runs out of money.

German Finance Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger told Bloomberg News in an emailed statement that the terms proposed by Greece do not meet the earlier agreed conditions of providing financial aid.

However, the European Commission sees the request as a good omen showing the Greek government's willingness to reach a compromise on stabilizing the economic situation in the eurozone.

"President Juncker sees this letter as a positive sign, which, in his assessment, could pave the way for a reasonable compromise in the interest of the financial stability in the euro area as a whole," Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told a news briefing.

After months of denying having a hand in the Ukrainian coupe, US President Barack Obama admitted playing power broker for the "transition." This probably falls short of America's actual involvement.

Washington was investing heavily in Ukraine long before the Maidan protests started in Kiev in 2013. According to Victoria Nuland, the State Department's top diplomat for Europe, since 1991 America has poured $5 billion of taxpayers' money into what she called assisting Ukrainians in building "democratic skills and institutions."

Some of the money went into sponsoring various NGOs, political parties and media outlets. For instance, Hromadske.tv, an internet-based television channel created in summer 2013, received a grant of some $50,000 from the US embassy. The channel provided full-time coverage of the Maidan protests and gave a platform to various opposition figures.

Such funding is a well-known tool of the American government. Washington describes it as promoting a positive change and denies accusations that it gives money to get leverage to pursue its own goals in targeted countries. But in Ukraine US officials played a far more prominent role than simply funding local players.

Some like film director Oliver Stone even call it a US-staged coup, while former US Congressman Ron Paul called for the US to stop meddling in Ukraine.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has criticized EU's attempts to isolate Moscow, in particular blaming former Polish PM and President of the European Council Donald Tusk for spearheading the European anti-Russia crusade.

"This rift in the EU is very deep, of a strategic nature," Orban said regarding the division in the EU and on how to build the bloc's relationship with Russia.

The European Council President Tusk is "on the other side" of this dividing line, Orban said, a day after striking economic deals with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Tusk has been an ardent critic of Moscow's stance throughout the Ukrainian conflict, and on numerous occasions has called for a much tougher sanctions against Moscow. He speaks out against the "appeasement" of Moscow.

Once again, appeasement encourages the aggressor to greater acts of violence. Time to step up our policy based on cold facts, not illusions

— Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) January 24, 2015

But the EU countries are divided in Brussels in their attitude towards Russia. Orban specified that the Baltic States and Poland sided with the United States in their belief that Russia should be gradually excluded from cooperation with Europe.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is hoping its decision to boost workers' paychecks will help it boost its bottom line.

The nation's largest private employer announced on Thursday that it's giving a raise to about half-million U.S. workers as part of a $1 billion investment that includes changes that Wal-Mart says are aimed at giving workers more opportunities for advancement and more consistent schedules.

The changes come as the company has faced increased pressure to pay its hourly employees more. But Wal-Mart, which has been criticized for its messy stores and poor customer service, says it's also focusing on recruiting and retaining better workers so that it can improve its business.

In late November 2013, the 'Euromaidan' in Kiev began as a popular protest against a generalized state of corruption and cronyism in Ukraine. The spark that ostensibly ignited the protests was the inability of then President Yanukovych to sign an EU Association Agreement that would cut Ukraine's economic and military ties to Russia in favor of a closer relationship with the EU and NATO.

The EU had made the release of former Ukrainian prime minister and "gas princess" Tymoshenko a precondition for signing the agreement. But the fact that Tymoshenko was/is a convicted embezzler of state funds, combined with the rather severe economic impact the EU Association Agreement would have had on the Ukrainian economy, made it impossible for a consensus in the Ukrainian government to be reached, despite the fact that Yanukovych urged Parliament to put aside their differences and ratify the agreement. In fact, the EU's insistence that Tymoshenko be released appears now to have been designed to ensure the EU-Ukraine Association agreement failed and Yanukovych blamed for that failure and removed from office. Whatever the case, when the agreement was not signed, Ukrainians took to the streets in protest, right on cue.

A 28-year-old hacker currently serving a six-month prison sentence for computer crimes now says that authorities asked him to help the United States gather information on Mexican drug cartels, then charged him with dozens of counts after he refused.

Fidel Salinas of Texas started his half-year prison sentence last Friday, according to court documents obtained by RT, three months after he accepted a plea deal that saw him owning up to a single count of accessing without authorization the computer system of Hidalgo County in 2012. The activity was part of an operation that authorities say involved the hacktivist collective Anonymous.

This Wednesday, however, Wired reported that Salinas said ahead of surrendering to US Marshals last week that the agreement he reached with the Department of Justice was hardly the first time that the two had discussed a deal.

Not that it was really a conspiracy 'theory' but with General Wesley Clark (ret.) now openly admitting "ISIS got started through funding from our friends and allies... to fight to the death against Hezbollah" it appears the 'angel investors' cat is out of the bag. Adding that "they recruited the zealots and religious fundamentalists" Clark says 'we' create "Frankenstein." He is careful not to name names, but we ask (rhetorically of course), which of our (oil-bearing) allies has the biggest bone to pick with Hezbollah (apart from Israel of course)?

Clark on creating Frankenstein...

I never fail to be amazed -- and that's undoubtedly my failing. I mean, if you retain a capacity for wonder you can still be awed by a sunset, but should you really be shocked that the sun is once again sinking in the west? Maybe not.

The occasion for such reflections: machine guns in my hometown. To be specific, several weeks ago, New York Police Commissioner William J. Bratton announced the formation of a new 350-officer Special Response Group (SRG). Keep in mind that New York City already has a police force of more than 34,000 -- bigger, that is, than the active militaries of Austria, Bulgaria, Chad, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kenya, Laos, Switzerland, or Zimbabwe -- as well as its own "navy," including six submersible drones. Just another drop in an ocean of blue, the SRG will nonetheless be a squad for our times, trained in what Bratton referred to as "advanced disorder control and counterterror." It will also, he announced, be equipped with "extra heavy protective gear, with the long rifles and machine guns -- unfortunately sometimes necessary in these instances." And here's where he created a little controversy in my hometown. The squad would, Bratton added, be "designed for dealing with events like our recent protests or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris."

Now, that was an embarrassment in liberal New York. By mixing the recent demonstrations over the police killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and others into the same sentence with the assault on Mumbai and the Charlie Hebdo affair in France, he seemed to be equating civil protest in the Big Apple with acts of terrorism. Perhaps you won't be surprised then that the very next day the police department started walking back the idea that the unit would be toting its machine guns not just to possible terror incidents but to local protests. A day later, Bratton himself walked his comments back even further. ("I may have in my remarks or in your interpretation of my remarks confused you or confused the issue.") Now, it seems there will be two separate units, the SRG for counterterror patrols and a different, assumedly machine-gun-less crew for protests.

Here was what, like the sun going down in the west, shouldn't have shocked me but did: no one thought there was any need to walk back the arming of the New York Police Department with machine guns for whatever reasons. The retention of such weaponry should, of course, have been the last thing to shock any American in 2015. After all, the up-armoring and militarization of the police has been an ongoing phenomenon since 9/11, even if it only received real media attention after the police, looking like an army of occupation, rolled onto the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, in response to protests over the killing of Michael Brown.

I am writing this piece on the margins of a crucial negotiation with my country's creditors — a negotiation the result of which may mark a generation, and even prove a turning point for Europe's unfolding experiment with monetary union.

Game theorists analyze negotiations as if they were split-a-pie games involving selfish players. Because I spent many years during my previous life as an academic researching game theory, some commentators rushed to presume that as Greece's new finance minister I was busily devising bluffs, stratagems and outside options, struggling to improve upon a weak hand.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If anything, my game-theory background convinced me that it would be pure folly to think of the current deliberations between Greece and our partners as a bargaining game to be won or lost via bluffs and tactical subterfuge.

The trouble with game theory, as I used to tell my students, is that it takes for granted the players' motives. In poker or blackjack this assumption is unproblematic. But in the current deliberations between our European partners and Greece's new government, the whole point is to forge new motives. To fashion a fresh mind-set that transcends national divides, dissolves the creditor-debtor distinction in favor of a pan-European perspective, and places the common European good above petty politics, dogma that proves toxic if universalized, and an us-versus-them mind-set.