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EAST LANSING -- A man not unfamiliar with criticism, Rev. Al Sharpton Thursday called on a crowd at Michigan State University's Wharton Center to not back down from activism in the 21st century.

Sharpton, the third and final speaker in the university's Dr. William Anderson From Freedom to Slavery: An American Odyssey lecture series, is used to being criticized for being at the forefront of many sensitive conversations in the country.

On Thursday, he said many are looking to tear down activists while lauding those who have come before -- as many have done with the release of the movie Selma -- because they're afraid of doing the hard work.

"We love to talk about what other generations did. The tension comes when the present generation talks about what we must do," Sharpton said.

He added, "We will find any reason to besmirch or smear a movement, because we really want to find a reason not to do what others did so well before us."

Sharpton -- who received $5,000 for speaking at the university, according to contract documents obtained by The State News -- followed speeches by Harry Belafonte and Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, who both spoke earlier this month. Belafonte's lecture cost the university $25,000, according to The State News report, and Lewis spoke for free.

Speaking for about 45 minutes Thursday, Sharpton hit on many of the same themes that Belafonte and Lewis touched. He especially emphasized how far African Americans have come in the fight for equality while giving examples on how far the community has to go.

He told a story about finding out that former South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond's ancestors owned his ancestors as slaves before the Civil War, and talked about how his mother had to endure segregation. Many people who tell the black community not to focus on race don't understand how close it is to home for African Americans, he said.

"It's easy for people to talk about getting over something they never had to get over," he said. "... They call us race baiters. No, we (sic) talking about our family tree."

Sharpton also talked about the protests in Ferguson, MO, and Staten Island in New York City in the summer of 2014. Sharpton was involved in the organization of protests in both cities at the request of the families of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, he said.

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Rev. Al Sharpton calls for activism despite criticism: 'If you don't fight, you are guaranteed to lose'

CSI: - Nick Stokes Is Leaving CSI
Nick Stokes makes a major decision effecting the CSI team moving forward but first the entire team must deal with a final struggle with the Gig Harbor killer...

By: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

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CSI: - Nick Stokes Is Leaving CSI - Video

OnCurb Your Enthusiasm, comedian J.B. Smoove plays Leon Black, the brother of Loretta Black, a woman who ends up moving in with Larry David in Los Angeles after being displaced from New Orleans by a hurricane. Despite already having a home in L.A. not to mention not even being formally invited into Larrys house Leon moves in, and quickly becomes a key player in Larrys antics. When Loretta finally moves out, Larry gestures to Leon, I guess this means youll be obviously meaning to ask him to leave as well. When Leon quickly replies that hell be Going upstairs to eat this f****** Chinese food, pausing to take a sip of soda, in my f****** room, Larry cant even muster the energy to debate the point.

Leon is the textbook definition of what Ive come to call the semi-welcome guest. A person who, although you dont necessarily want them in your home, is entertaining enough that youre willing to put aside your reservations about his or her presence for what you hope will be a brief period of time. Leon is profane, selfish and obnoxious. Hes also hilarious and, more often than not, unexpectedly a boon to Larry.

As luck would have it, I ended up interlocked with semi-welcome guests of my own last weekend. When a buddy of mine in Jacksonville asked if he and an unspecified number of his friends could stay with me for a night while they were in town for a concert one that I had not planned on attending I had a few concerns.

For one: He, as well as his posse, are punks. Im not using that word in a condescending sense either. The first time we hung out, he was selling records and promoting his self-published zine at an abandoned warehouse for an impromptu punk show. He was also the first person I ever moshed with.

Second, having witnessed it firsthand, I know the level of belligerence and destruction hes capable of when sauced. The idea of having a whole horde of people like him in my house made my blood run cold.

Third, and perhaps a tad bit pejoratively, I live with fraternity dudes. Punks and fraternity dudes are like Ann Coulter and critical thinking they just dont go together.

Against my better judgment and because I love him, I agreed to let him and his homies crash at my place. When I asked him how many people would be staying, the following text conversation ensued. Names are changed to protect the innocent.

How many people/who

Just like 3. Derek, Jack, maybe this chick Alexis. And Bri. Robbie.

Thats 5. 6 total, actually. Yeah. Jesus.

Excerpt from:
Dont kick out those semi-welcome guests

BRUSSELS: The European Union may be a step closer to approving a shared airline passenger record, to detect travellers joining or returning from war in Syria and Iraq.

A new proposal has been put to the European parliament in Brussels but the issue remains controversial with privacy advocates, worried about anti-terror measures going too far.

Europes security services are on the lookout to prevent terror attacks like at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris and the shootings at a Jewish Museum in Brussels last year both carried out by young Europeans who returned from fighting with extremists in Syria and Iraq.

One prevention tool under debate is an air passenger name record (PNR) that allows intelligence services across Europe access to personal data like methods of payment and addresses.

A data sharing accord already exists between the United States and the EU, but the EU lawmaker championing the proposal says Europe has to step up surveillance of its own, generally open borders.

"We need now to make sure we have enough information to look at patterns of behaviour, said Timothy Kirkhope, a British member of the European Parliament. That is the basis on which we can find criminals and find terrorists in order to protect our citizens. Stop things happening such as the atrocities in Paris recently."

EU governments have yet to approve a so-called PNR system but support from the European Parliament is already divided. This proposal is nothing new - lawmakers at the European Parliament rejected it back in 2013 on the grounds that increased surveillance of airline passengers breached citizen privacy rights.

"We need to deliver whatever is necessary and proportionate to get a higher level of security. But what you are proposing now, the proposal of blanket mass surveillance of citizens, is exactly the opposite of that. It's not delivering that, said Jan Albrecht, a German member of the European Parliament.

Already before the Paris attacks, it was possible to know who is on which plane. We already know it. We have the advanced passenger information. It's there, we can access it, we know who's on the plane. So with regards to known suspects, we can follow them - so why dont we focus on the suspects?"

Opposition to data gathering has been particularly acute in countries like Germany, outraged over revelations of mass surveillance by US intelligence services after 9/11 attacks.

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EU passenger record sharing proposal sparks privacy debate

The first round of the battle for the euro is over, and Germany has won. The whole European Union won, really, but the Germans set the strategy.

Technically everybody just kicked the can down the road four months by extending the existing bailout arrangements for Greece, but what was really revealed in the past week is that the Greeks cant win. Not now, not later.

The left-wing Syriza Party stormed to power in Greece last month promising to ditch the austerity that has plunge a third of the population below the poverty line and to renegotiate the countrys massive $270 billion bail-out with the EU and the International Monetary Fund. Exhausted Greek voters just wanted an end to six years of pain and privation, and Syriza offered them hope. But it has been in retreat ever since.

In the election campaign, Syriza promised 300,000 new jobs and a big boost in the monthly minimum wage (from $658 to $853). After last weeks talks with the EU and the IMF, all thats left is a promise to expand an existing program that provides temporary work for the unemployed, and an ambition to raise the minimum wage over time.

Its promise to provide free electricity and subsidized food for families without incomes remains in place, but Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras government has promised the EU and the IMF that its fight against the humanitarian crisis (will have) no negative fiscal effect. In other words, it wont spend extra money on these projects unless it makes equal cuts somewhere else.

Above all, its promise not to extend the bail-out program had to be dropped. Instead, it got a four-month bridging loan that came with effectively the same harsh restrictions on Greek government spending (although Syriza was allowed to rewrite them in its own words). And that loan will expire at the end of June, just before Greece has to redeem $7 billion in bonds.

So there will be four months of attritional warfare and then another crisis which Greece will once again lose. It will lose partly because it hasnt actually got a very good case for special treatment, and partly because the European Union doesnt really believe it will pull out of the euro common currency.

Greeces debt burden is staggering about $30,000 per capita. It can never be repaid, and some of it will eventually have to be canceled or rescheduled into the indefinite future. But not now, when other euro members like Spain, Portugal and Ireland are struggling with some success to pay down their heavy but smaller debts. If Greece got such a sweet deal, everybody else would demand debt relief too.

The cause of the debt was the same in every case: the euro was a stable, low-interest currency that banks were happy to lend in, even to relatively low-income European countries that were in the midst of clearly unsustainable, debt-fuelled booms. So all the southern European EU members (and Ireland) piled in but nobody else did it on the same scale as the Greeks.

The boom lasted for the best part of a decade after the euro currency launched in 1999. Ordinary Greeks happily bought imported German cars, French wines, Italian luxury goods and much else, while the rich and politically well connected raked off far larger sums and paid as little tax as possible. Greek governments ended up lying about the size of the countrys debts.

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Greece loses, European Union wins