Government Grants for All

First Teams Finalized for Canada Games

Men’s softball, women’s basketball and field hockey are among the
first sports to make final selections of athletes who will
represent Nova Scotia at the 2005 Canada Games in Regina, Sask.,
Aug. 6-20.
Government of Nova Scotia News Releases – Office of Health Promotion (to May 10, 2005)

Tags: Canada, Finalized, First, Games, Teams

Best PC Games of All Time

When every day reality takes its toll on you, what you need is an escape into the magical world of virtual reality. You can fight wars, pull off a grand theft auto, rescue a princess and be simply what ever you want to be in this world of virtual reality! This article has a compilation of the best PC games of all time for your perusal. Also check out the best pc games (2010).

While getting lost in virtual reality for too long is not advisable, it is a great stress buster. PC game developers have challenged their imaginative powers to the hilt to come up with awesomely designed games that have gotten people addicted to gaming. As I started compiling this list of the best PC games of all time, I couldn’t help but get nostalgic about the endless hours I have spent in front of my computer playing these games.

List of Best PC Games of All Time

This is an exhaustive list of the best PC games of all time, that you must know about. It includes best computer games (2010), as well as the top 10 games of all time. Here is the promised list of best PC games ever. Check out game reviews for more detailed information about these games.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – 2010
Empire: Total War – 2009
Prince of Persia – 1989-2010
Demigod – 2009
Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II – 2009
ArmA II: Operation Arrowhead – 2010
Killing Floor – 2009
The Sims 3 – 2009
Civilization IV – 2005
World of Warcraft – 2004
Fallout – 1997
SPORE Galactic Adventures – 2009
Deus Ex – 2000
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – 2009
Rome: Total War – 2004
Napoleon: Total War – 2010
System Shock 2 – 1999
The Secret of Monkey Island – 1990
Half-Life 2 – 2004
Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer – 2010
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind – 2002
Mass Effect 2: Overload – 2010
Half-Life – 1998
SPORE Creepy and Cute – 2008
Doom – 1993
Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City – 2010
Battlefield 2142 – 2006
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – 2003
Call Of Duty – 2003
Unreal Tournament (UT2004) – 2004
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – 2006
Football Manager 2007 – 2006
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne – 2003
Company of Heroes – 2006
Operation Flashpoint – 2001
Quake III: Arena – 1999
Eve Online – 2003
Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn – 2000
Dragon Age: Origins – 2009
Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic – 2003
Diablo II – 2000
IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 – 2006
Battlefield 1942 – 2002
Counter-Strike: Source – 2004
Mafia – 2002
Singularity – 2010
Plain Sight – 2010
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines – 2004
Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom – 1995
Far Cry – 2004
Ultima VII: The Black Gate – 1992
GTR 2 – FIA GT Racing Game – 2006
Pro Evolution Soccer 6 – 2006
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time – 2003
Need For Speed: Most Wanted – 2005
Psychonauts – 2005
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos – 2002
Sam & Max Hit the Road – 1993
Microsoft Flight Simulator X – 2006
Tropico 3: Absolute Power – 2010
Duke Nukem 3D – 1996
Quake – 1996
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars – 2007
Aliens vs Predator 2 – 2001
Syndicate – 1993
X-COM: UFO Defense – 1994
Commandos 2: Men of Courage – 2001
TIE Fighter – 1998
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II – 1997
Beyond Good & Evil – 2003
Black & White – 2001
Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now – 1998
Thief: Deadly Shadows – 2004
The Sims 2 – 2004
EverQuest – 1999
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault – 2002
Tomb Raider – 1996
Planescape: Torment – 1999
Neverwinter Nights – 2002
Guild Wars – 2005
Age of Empires – 1997
Trackmania: United – 2007
X3 Reunion – 2005
SimCity 2000 – 1993
Garry’s Mod – 2006
Dungeon Keeper – 1997
SWAT 4 – 2005
The Longest Journey – 1999
The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay – 2004
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl – 2007
Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War – 2004
Fahrenheit – 2005
Total Annihilation – 1997
Final Fantasy VII – 1998
Uplink – 2001
No One Lives Forever 2 – 2002
Frontier: Elite II – 1993
Grand Prix Legends – 1998
Splinter Cell – 2003
Silent Hunter III – 2005
Cave Story – 2005
The appeal of a particular game is largely a matter of taste. So these were the best PC games of all time, that are my personal favorites. If you haven’t played any one of them, it is time to check them out and know what you are actually missing!

Tags: Best, Games, Time

War Games

Since his surprise election in 2005, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has widely been seen in the west as a dangerous demagogue with an alarming anti-Semitic streak, a man determined to take his country into a bruising showdown with the US. His jarring style of anti-diplomacy has alienated virtually every country bar his declared allies in Cuba, Belarus, Venezuela and Syria. On the one hand, his repeated collisions with the west have played to a rising wave of nationalism at home, and to the anger felt by the wider Islamic world. On the other hand, he has also given America the potential excuse it has long sought to open hostilities. One third of the US navy is massed in the Persian Gulf. Whether a war were fought over Iran’s bid for a nuclear bomb or its alleged meddling in the ongoing carnage in Iraq little matters to the Bush administration. Even a National Intelligence Estimate, published on Monday, that downplayed Iran’s nuclear weapons intentions does not really matter to the hawks – they are ready to go.

In Europe, what was once unthinkable – backing another, potentially bloody conflagration against an Islamic power while the world is still bogged down in Iraq – has become a possibility. Even before Bush started talking in October in Old Testament terms about a third world war being triggered by Iran, the French foreign minister had argued back in September that Iran’s nuclear program was bringing the west to the brink: “We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war.”

Ahmadinejad, however, has suckered the west into a confrontation for his own reasons. He has derailed Iran’s economy, squandering record oil profits and paralyzing the banks. He has alienated his core support among the poor. He has brazenly attempted to rig clerical institutions, the machinery that turns out Shiadom’s future leaders, so as to consolidate his rule. Such an audacious plan, from a man who could once do no wrong, has triggered a momentous fight-back from affronted clerics and senior political figures.

Those who know him best say Ahmadinejad has come to realize that it will take something momentous for him to hold on to power come the parliamentary elections next March – hence his provocations. Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born professor of international politics at Tufts University in Boston, goes so far as to say, “He desperately needs war with America to survive politically in a country that is as exhausted as Europe and the US is with his increasingly volatile grandstanding.”

For a visitor, the sheer size of Iran’s capital is daunting. Tehran is one of the modern megalopolises, twice as populous as London. The wealthy northern suburb of Elahieh is often highlighted as proof of the emerging new Iranian society: photographs of Gucci-clad women and men in jeans are beamed around the world as evidence of change. However, it soon becomes obvious that its influence is small. More than 10 million poor, religiously conservative residents dominate the city. They migrated here during the years of the Shah, when bungled land reforms allocated such small parcels of agricultural land to them that no one could produce enough food to survive. Today they live cheek by jowl: the chadoris, women swathed head to foot in semi-circular black robes, and the basijis, men and boys who dress like their president and who have been recruited by the million to the Basij volunteer military force of the Revolutionary Guards. They are the country’s plain-clothed ears and eyes, as well as the morality police, enforcing a rigid vision of a Shia state. In the city warehouses are filled with workers trimming silk carpets destined for western showrooms they will never visit. Most have never held a passport and have little interest in seeing the world.

Ahmadinejad had barely travelled, too. He talked proudly when he stood for the presidency in 2005 of having left Iran only once, “for a short trip to Austria.” He appeared to be one of the people. In Iran what you wear is a political statement, and he sounded and dressed as they did. Conjuring the time when he was among the disenfranchised mass who signed up to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps established by Ayatollah Khomeini, he promised to take people back to the pious values of 1979. A turning point in his campaign came when he released a short film showing him dining cross-legged on the floor of his simple, working-class home on Tehran’s 72nd square, his wife hidden by her chador. Compare this with the image of his opponent, Hashemi Rafsanjani, two-time president, a wealthy ayatollah whose family owned hundreds of acres of pistachio orchards in Kerman province, and who produced ill-judged campaign ads showing him discussing the lack of entertainment options with a group of affluent, western-dressed teenagers from Elahieh.

When Ahmadinejad appeared on the international stage he seemed unconventional, even shabby, among the crowd of sombre suits; his uniform was a crumpled jacket, buttoned-up shirt and beard, his nervous smile made him seem modest and simultaneously embarrassed. World leaders overlooked his apparent ignorance of the niceties of international diplomacy and his street vernacular, drawn from the working-class suburb of Tehran where he grew up, the youngest son of a migrant worker.

But it soon became clear that this former student of traffic management and one-time mayor of Tehran was advancing a radical conservative agenda. An intensely religious man, he began to sound Talibanesque in his pronouncements. There were no homosexuals in Iran, he said (without explaining this was because they were forced to undergo sex-change operations at the government’s expense). Women belonged in the chador, he declared, as his administration published figures showing that in just two months 160,000 had been charged with being insufficiently veiled earlier this year. Public hangings – which had not been seen in the capital for many years – returned to the city’s streets and were broadcast on live TV. After drawing international condemnation for restarting Iran’s stalled nuclear program, Ahmadinejad raised the temperature by sacking Ali Larijani, Iran’s vastly experienced secular nuclear negotiator, replacing him with a former militia leader.

Throughout Tehran, there are 60ft-high posters depicting Iran’s “martyrs”, the million soldiers who fell during the eight-year war with Iraq in the 80s. The ghosts of the dead fill the city. Ahmadinejad has invoked them at every stage of his political career. He reminds people that when he was mayor in 2003, he had martyrs’ bodies exhumed from their provincial cemeteries and reburied in the capital’s squares so that wherever people walked there were memories of loss beneath their feet.

Patriotism was only one string he pulled. At the heart of his election message was a claim that chimed with the deeply religious poor: a divine force protected him and would help the Iranian people get closer to God, too. In a series of national roadshows that became his political signature, he insisted that messengers from heaven had told him that the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure who Iranian Shi’ites believe vanished in AD873, was about to return to the mortal world bringing salvation.

According to the sacred texts of Shi’ism, the Mahdi’s reappearance would establish a just Islamic society at a time of war and chaos and, citing one such text, Ahmadinejad and his spiritual advisers declared that that time was now.

It must surely rank as one of the most hyperbolic manifesto pledges ever made, but still, it got Ahmadinejad elected. The new president then shared his vision with the UN general assembly in September 2005. During his address he appealed to God to “hasten the emergence of… the Promised One…” After he left the meeting, Ahmadinejad had a conversation with an Iranian cleric, describing how he had felt the hand of God in the UN, which was recorded and uploaded on to the net: “I felt it myself… for 27 to 28 minutes all the leaders did not blink. They were astonished… It’s not an exaggeration, I was looking.”

But there was no point making such grand pledges if he could not provide the evidence. Ahmadinejad began furiously investing millions of pounds to animate his claim that the Mahdi was coming. And he chose to do it at one of the holiest places in Iran.

The city of Qom, 90 miles south of Tehran, on the edge of the Kavir desert, is the scene of frenzied building work. According to local tradition, the Mahdi once appeared here in a vision to a shepherd watering his sheep at a well on the outskirts of the city, and devotees believe that it will be from this well that he re-emerges.

For several hundred years a small mosque, known as Jamkaran, stood on the vision site, attracting pilgrims who scribbled their innermost desires on scraps of paper that they threw into the well. One of Ahmadinejad’s first acts in power was to have his entire cabinet sign a piece of paper that was also put down the well, a pledge to transform the mosque into a place worthy of the Mahdi’s presence. Soon after, posters started appearing on the streets of Tehran declaring, “He’s Coming.” There was talk of a fast train link to connect Jamkaran to the capital in case the Mahdi turned up without warning, enabling politicians to get to the mosque in double-quick time.

Today it resembles an Islamic Lourdes. The modest mosque has been embellished with 100ft minarets, blue-tiled domes and new prayer halls. Hundreds of thousands of devout, working-class Iranians flock to the site, especially on Tuesday nights, the reputed time for the Mahdi’s reappearance. Ahmadinejad shuttles here almost weekly, and whenever he appears he is mobbed like a rock star. A holy of holies in an ultra-conservative country, it is out of bounds to western tourists who catch only a blur of blue tiles from their coaches as they are escorted down the motorway to the archaeological sites of Esfahan, Persepolis and Shiraz.

As the sun burns red, dozens of cranes and earth movers move along the horizon. Every road leading to the mosque is filled with chadoris, who run, clutching bags and children, to claim a small patch on the tarmac perimeter where they will eat, sleep and pray through the night. Ahead, the mosque is illuminated by a hundred thousand bulbs. Tears wash down the faces of worshipers as they catch their first glimpse of the minarets. As the muezzin’s call wells up from deep inside the complex at 7pm, the crowds kneel as one in prayer.

The maddah, or storyteller, takes the crowd on an emotional late-night journey. “Come on, come on! I have a fear of not seeing You!” he cries, appealing to the Mahdi, as the crowds sway and sob. He tells stories of martyrs who have come back in his dreams to warn that Iran has lost its way, and that until it returns to its revolutionary roots they will not reach paradise. Only Ahmadinejad can be trusted to carry out this exorcism, he warns. It is a message that resounds with every family here, as all have lost brothers, sons and fathers. “We must follow our president who is brave and facing western aggression,” says Farida Milani, from Yazd, who is here with her wheelchair-bound mother.

Before Ahmadinejad came along, Qom was home to one vitally important shrine, and it was not Jamkaran. The city was world-famous among Shias as the burial spot of Lady Fatima Masuma, a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, whose death here more than a millennium ago transformed a previously forlorn desert settlement into a pilgrimage site. It became a centre of learning in the 20s, when Shi’ite intellectuals, including Ruhollah Khomeini, began gathering. When he returned from exile in 1979 as Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, he resettled in Qom, from where he led the country’s transformation into an Islamic republic, turning the city’s seminaries into its ideological engine. Soon there would be 300 madrasas taking in 50,000 students.

Qom was tasked with fomenting Iran’s theocratic foreign policy; it became a place much feared by the US and Israel. Both accuse it of being a provocative source of inspiration for students affiliated to extreme groups, including Hezbollah and Hamas, who come to study at the government’s expense. Some have also returned to seek sanctuary, including Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s special operations chief, spotted in Qom in 2001. He has been accused of masterminding the 1983 bomb attacks on the US embassy and marine barracks in Beirut that killed 304, the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847 and numerous kidnappings of westerners in Beirut. More recently, he was blamed for the attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 that left 92 people dead. For these reasons Qom has been identified as a possible target in any US attack.

Ahmadinejad knew that scores of high-ranking clerics would be affronted by his manipulation of the Mahdi story, derisive of his scholarship and critical of what many saw as a cynical attempt to undermine the one man who had the authority to sack him. His claims challenged Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader and commander-in-chief, whose official title, vali-e faqih, means “God’s jurisprudent on earth” – a direct link with the divine that would be superseded if the Mahdi showed his face.

Although the Supreme Leader had done more than anyone to get the president elected, issuing directives to all Revolutionary Guardsmen and their families to vote for him in 2005, relations soured after Ahmadinejad proved not to be the malleable figure Khamenei had hoped for. Frozen out by the theocratic establishment, Ahmadinejad fought back. He began lambasting many of the city’s septuagenarian clerics for being corrupt and soft, reminding people that some had become rich during the Iraq war trading weapons and selling ration cards.

In Qom, Ahmadinejad sought to eclipse long-established seminaries with his own to bring the city under his control. Government money was poured into the Imam Khomeini Institute, a hardline madrasa whose scholars were charged with trawling through religious treatises to find evidence that the Mahdi’s re-emergence at Jamkaran was imminent. Ahmadinejad placed in charge Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, a cleric who would soon become known as an ayatollah, a significant promotion without the normal years of study.

Mesbah-Yazdi has become Ahmadinejad’s ideological mentor. They first met in the early 80s when Ahmadinejad attended a series of his lectures on the philosopher Martin Heidegger, who had been championed by the Nazis. Here, Ahmadinejad found the noisy, blue-collar nationalism that he would imbue with hyper-spirituality. He created a vision of a pious and soldierly people easing the path of the coming Mahdi.

Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University in California, who has studied Ahmadinejad’s background, explains. “Mesbah-Yazdi forged key elements of an Islamic pseudo-fascist ideology founded on a sour brew of anti-Semitism and Heideggerian philosophy… This in turn has informed Ahmadinejad’s world view.”

An enthusiastic supporter of the death penalty and public floggings, Mesbah-Yazdi was recently elected to the Assembly of Experts, the body responsible for choosing the next Supreme Leader. He has made it clear he is eyeing the top job.

The ground floor of the Imam Khomeini Iistitute is given over to a large bookshop exclusively selling works by Mesbah-Yazdi. His image is plastered on every wall. Turbaned mullahs enter the building on their way to class. Students come from all over the Muslim world – Pakistan, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine; there are even a handful from America.

A white-bearded ayatollah approaches and asks, “What are you doing here?” After a garbled explanation about wishing to study Islamic law, he introduces himself as Ayatollah Haghani, Yazdi’s director of international affairs. He is clearly uncertain, but agrees to show the library where mullahs hunch at study stations, their turbans neatly hanging on a hat-rack in the corner. The shelves are stacked with volumes by Marx, Popper and Russell, and in the periodicals section are anti-terrorism papers produced by Chatham House, in London. The ayatollah’s phone trills a Qu’ranic prayer; whoever is on the line is angry that foreigners are here. “You must leave,” the ayatollah says curtly. The elevator descends in silence and as the doors open on the ground floor three meaty security guards jump in. Behind them is the unmistakable figure of Mesbah-Yazdi. He brushes past, scowling, in a whirl of coffee-coloured robes. He signals for visitors to be escorted out.

Controlling Qom was only one plank in Ahmadinejad’s strategy. As a parvenu, wresting power from the political establishment has been equally important, and he has done it with gusto, filling the cabinet and major administrative bureaucracies with former Revolutionary Guards and intelligence officials. His new intelligence minister is Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehei, a man whom only a little digging reveals has been linked to the murders of Iranian political activists. The new interior minister, Mostafa Pour Mohammadi, sat on a three-person committee in 1988 that ordered the execution of thousands of political prisoners.

Even the culture ministry has been turned upside down. Its new chief is Hossein Saffar Harandi, a university buddy of Ahmadinejad and former Basij leader, whose first act in office was to call upon Iranian musicians to compose a symphony of support for Iran’s nuclear program, and who has shut down almost every newspaper and website critical of the regime. “It’s not what they did in the past that matters but what they do in the future,” the president has said in defense of his men. This is precisely what worries Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel peace prize-winning Iranian lawyer, who told the Guardian, “The situation in Iran has worsened considerably with these new men in power.” Women who complain of rape have been stoned. The age of consent for girls has been lowered to nine. Children have been convicted and executed for adult crimes. Barbers have been jailed for shaving beards.

Yet, for all Ahmadinejad’s efforts to control every aspect of Iranian life, his authority has begun slipping away. Some of Iran’s most senior clerics have questioned the manipulation of the Mahdi story. Mesbah-Yazdi has been derided as Professor Crocodile (the name Mesbah rhymes with temsah, the Persian word for the reptile), while Ahmadinejad has been accused of “endangering the reputation of Islam and the Qur’an” by Javadi-Amoli, an ayatollah at the Qom seminary school.

But the most damaging criticism comes from Iran’s Grand Ayatollahs, a band of 19 leaders whose spiritual authority remains unquestioned. They, too, have become enraged by the upstart in his Revolutionary Guards suit.

At his modest headquarters, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, Khomeini’s former deputy, sits cross-legged, a skullcap covering his remaining wisps of grey hair. He does not hold back. He accuses the current regime of despotism, over-reliance on Iran’s security forces and disrespect for the seminary. “Power brings ignorance, and those in power now have forgotten what the revolution was for.” He pauses, aware of the weight of his words. “They have become extremists, going in a different direction.”

The Jamkaran extravaganza has enraged the grand ayatollah. “People go expecting to see the Mahdi sitting there in a corner. They are being misled. It is wrong. The Mahdi is very dear to our people and the politicians are taking advantage.” He has one more thing to add: “Iran needs to put aside all the bad blood and America needs to stop interfering, before it creates another Iraq or Afghanistan.”

At his Qom madrasa, Grand Ayatollah Yusef Saanei has begun to make some startling pronouncements: women having equal rights to men, non-Muslims being treated as respectfully as Muslims, listening to music being permissible, men being allowed to shave their beards. On his wall is a framed quote from Khomeini, saying, “I have raised Mr Saanei like a son of mine.”

“America thinks Iran is violent and responsible for all its ills,” he says. “It is up to our leaders to show the world the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam, to show Shia Islam has never condoned terrorism and renounces terrorist groups like al-Qaida.” Unlike his president, he wants reconciliation. “After Khomeini died, the spirit of what he believed in died away, too. If the current president continues, there will be no new generation.” Saanei taps his cane. “If the people now in power carry on, Iran will crumple from the inside and die.”

Outside Qom, dissent is building, too. People have begun to question how far Ahmadinejad is prepared to go with his nuclear sabre-rattling and whether the country can defend itself against US “surgical strikes”. Among targets already identified by Washington hawks are Revolutionary Guards facilities, many of them in the capital. Last month Jomhuri Eslami, an influential conservative newspaper, chastised the president in a front-page editorial for describing officials who advocated restraint in the nuclear stand-off as “traitors and spies”.

However, the most significant threat to Ahmadinejad is his appalling economic record. As soon as he became president, he began increasing state control and destroying the free market. Ministry of finance officials were replaced by clerics with no economic experience; Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi was appointed Ahmadinejad’s main economic adviser.

Together they have implemented a series of disastrous reforms dictated by the principles of Sharia law. After Mesbah-Yazdi likened banks to loan sharks, Iran’s independent banking sector was crippled by a raft of restrictive measures. A low-interest loans scheme for small businesses, designed to encourage job creation, collapsed. Millions have been spent on popular measures, such as the “Love Fund” to help poor young men meet the costs of marriage, and the minimum wage has been increased by 60%. But more than 20% are now out of work and the urban poor, Ahmadinejad’s backbone, have been floored by rising prices.

Iran should be one of the richest countries in the world. It is, after all, the fourth largest oil producer and has the second biggest natural gas reserve. But the president has squandered windfall oil revenues on billion-dollar no…#8209;bid contracts awarded to companies owned by friends in the Revolutionary Guards. In the past 18 months, millions of dollars worth of oil revenue is thought to have disappeared into individual pockets as the military has moved seamlessly into building airports, producing oil and opening mobile phone networks, transforming Iran into a military state not unlike its neighbor, Pakistan.

Mohammad Ghouchani, editor of the Hammihan newspaper, says, “Ahmadinejad likes to present himself as Robin Hood, taking from the rich to help the poor, but his scattergun and ill-conceived policies have achieved precisely the opposite.” Evidence that this message is sinking in came in September when a poll found that 56% of Ahmadinejad’s supporters in 2005 would not turn out for him again. Meanwhile, Hashemi Rafsanjani, the reformist he outwitted in 2005, has gathered strength.

Iran’s former ambassador to the UK, Hossein Adeli, has appealed to the west to back down. “This country, this baby of revolution, has been living 30 years in isolation under a deep sense of insecurity, and the majority of Iranians are tired. We are trapped in a wall of deep mistrust and suspicion with the US and UK that has now reached its peak. Our officials and your officials sit in their respective positions issuing rhetoric for their domestic audiences. They’re worrying about winning the next election, not communicating with the other side or seeing the ground realities.” Adeli should know. Until Ahmadinejad forced him out of office in December 2005, he had been handling secret discussions between Tehran, London and the Bush administration.

What should happen next? “We have to start talking. If we don’t, Ahmadinejad will be saved by people who have begun to loathe him. Washington needs to stop, take breath and realise we have many common strategic interests. Iran’s most important strength, our weapon, is our influence in the heartland of the world.”

Instead of open hostilities, Adeli calls for investment coupled with an offer of unconditional negotiations from Washington. He believes that would provide the impetus for some of the four million wealthy Iranians exiles who took a trillion dollars worth of capital with them to return and launch a campaign for the Islamic Republic’s first ever democratic election. It is one that Ahmadinejad would now most likely lose.

Tags: Games

Top Xbox 360 Games

There are plenty of options to choose from when it comes to choosing Xbox 360 games. This seventh generation gaming console, produced by Microsoft has, taken the gaming world by storm. On June 14, 2010, Microsoft launched the latest model of Xbox 360 and will be rolling out improved models periodically. If you are a new owner of Xbox 360, you might want to know about the top Xbox 360 games ever. The best is always yet to be and there may be many top Xbox games in the future that may surpass these. I present the top Xbox 360 games of all time here for your perusal. If you are looking for new games to buy in the near future, the listing of games I provide here will be helpful.

Choosing the best games on the Xbox 360 platform is largely a matter of taste. What game you get hooked to, depends largely on your own interests. The games listed here are high rated by game critics and are backed by high sales volumes, which are a testimony to their overall popularity. These games have some of the best graphics, are backed by a great plot and score high on the awesomeness quotient.

Top 10 Xbox 360 Games (2010)

What makes a video game stand out is the level of detailing and graphical aesthetics combined with an excellent plot. On the Xbox 360 platform, there is a wide variety of genre to choose from. You have sports, adventure, fantasy, strategy and many more. I find it really tough to make a decision when I enter a game store. With so many new titles coming in every month, it is truly a problem of plenty. Here is a list of top 10 best Xbox 360 Games (2010).

Read Dead Redemption
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction
Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker
Final Fantasy XIII
Fallout: New Vegas
Dead Rising 2
Max Payne 3
BioShock 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
In the next section, I present the top Xbox 360 games for kids, as well as adult gamers.

Top Xbox 360 Games of All Time

After that list of top 10 Xbox 360 games, you must check out the following list which includes ‘Platinum Hits’ on the Xbox 360 platform. These games are chosen by Microsoft for the high sales records they have set and the overall popularity they enjoy. They have also cut the prices of these top rated Xbox 360 games of all time. Here is the platinum games list for Xbox 360.
Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation
Halo 3
Army of Two
Kameo: Elements of Power
Soulcalibur IV
Spider-Man 3
Assassin’s Creed
Kung Fu Panda
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock
Sonic the Hedgehog
Grand Theft Auto IV
Dead or Alive 4
Medal of Honor: Airborne
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Burnout Paradise
Burnout Revenge
Transformers: The Game
Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe
Crackdown
Condemned: Criminal Origins
Lost Planet: Colonies
Midnight Club: Los Angeles
Tomb Raider: Underworld
Naruto: Rise of a Ninja
Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie
Project Gotham Racing 4
Race Driver: GRID
Resident Evil 5
Saints Row 2
Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Colin McRae: Dirt
Need for Speed: ProStreet
FIFA 09
Hitman: Blood Money
Pro Evolution Soccer 2009
Far Cry 2
Tenchu Senran
Project Sylpheed
Chrome Hounds
Rumble Roses XX
I guess these are enough games to keep you busy for some months! You will really enjoy playing some of the classics listed above. Halo 3 is my personal favorite. You could select the top ten best Xbox 360 games of all time from the list above.

Read more on:
Best Xbox 360 Games
Best Xbox 360 Multiplayer Games
Cheap Xbox 360 Games
So these were the top Xbox 360 games of all time, that you can choose from. I am sure you might have already added some to your shopping list. Read out more detailed reviews and get a feel of the game through trial versions, before you go ahead and buy one. The above top Xbox 360 games list has hopefully made your choice easier!

Tags: Games, Xbox

College Football Bowl Games

History of college bowl games:
Modern day American Football has come a long way from its origins as a variation of the Rugby game played in England. The person mainly responsible for this transition was a chap named Walter Camp, a former player from Yale, who introduced the rules in the 1880s that transformed American Football into the unique sport it is. He introduced the eleven member team with the seven men offensive set-up and four men backfield, the play from scrimmage and the scoring rules. Camp was also a literary man and publicized the game further through numerous articles in the leading publications of the day.

Before Camp arrived on the scene, football was played with Rugby style rules and it should be noted that the first intercollegiate football game in the USA was played in this style two whole years before an official codified Rugby game was played in England. This first US intercollegiate football game took place on 6 November 1869 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, between Rutgers College (now known as Rutgers University) and the College of New Jersey (now called Princeton University). The game took place on College Field, which is now the site of Rutgers University’s College Avenue Gymnasium. Rutgers won this game 6-4. A week later, another game was held on the Princeton home-grounds and this time Princeton won 8-0. In both these games, the field was considerably larger than it is today, each team was made up of 25 players and there were no officials to referee the games.

Shortly thereafter, in 1870, a match was held between Columbia University and Rutgers College and the sport soon spread to other colleges. A game between Tufts University and Harvard, played on 4 June 1875, bore some resemblance to its modern-day counterpart with each team having eleven players, the players being allowed to run carrying the ball and tackle each other and ball itself being egg-shaped rather than spherical.

Then, of course, Mr. Camp came along and made the game more like it is now. The popularity of college football continued to grow and was eclipsed only by the sheer brutality of the game. The early players were not armored-up like today – a football uniform devised by the Princeton player L.P. Smock (yes, that was really his name), some padding and a thick head with a full hair thatch was all the protection the players had in the rough and tumble of the game. Serious injuries and even deaths were not unknown and this led to a public outcry against the game, with some colleges temporarily banning the game and President Theodore Roosevelt threatening a more permanent ban.

In response to this, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was established and they issued new rules intended to make the game less deadly. The forward pass was introduced and mass momentum plays like the flying wedge tackle were banned. College football games continued to thrive and retained a strong fan following even after the formation of the National Football League (NFL).

College football bowl games:
College football games usually begin towards August end, a few weeks before the NFL games start, and continue through December to the beginning of February. The post-season games are known as college football bowls. The term ‘bowl’ came about from the shape of the Pasadena Stadium in California where the first ever bowl game, the Rose Bowl, was played in 1902 between Michigan and Stanford. Michigan won 49-0, a lopsided score which freaked out the organizers into thinking that fans wouldn’t show up for another football match the following year. So they held a chariot race instead, trying out amateurs first and then professionals, and failing miserably to please the audiences with both. So it was back to football. The idea of the Rose Bowl was adapted all around the country and gave rise to other events like the Sugar Bowl, the Orange Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl. These four bowls are the main staple of the BCS championship series, but there are also other bowl games like the Gator Bowl, the Florida Citrus Bowl and the Alamo Bowl. There have also been many short-lived bowl games like the Oil Bowl, the Salad Bowl, the Cigar Bowl, the Delta Bowl, the Harbor Bowl and the Raisin Bowl, to mention some.

Bowl games in college:
College football teams are ranked in the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly known as Division I-A) and the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly known as I-AA). The playing rules for all the Divisions are decided by the NCAA. A team must win six games in the season to qualify for playing in a bowl game. The bowl game they then get to play in depends upon what their conference ranking is. Another NCAA rule is that the players don’t receive salaries for playing; many, however, receive college scholarships and grants.

After playing a series of bowl games, the annual national champion is decided by a vote of non-playing sport authorities, like sports writers and commentators.

Tags: Bowl, College, Football, Games

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