i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh.> welcome to all our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. anti-government protests are continuing in turkey despite an increasingly violent state crackdown. on tuesday, turkish police arrested 87 people in a series of raids targeting those suspected of participating in weeks of anti-government protests. earlier today police used water cannons to disperse hundreds of protesters and the turkish capital. the turkish government is now threatening to send in armed troops into cities. meanwhile a performance artist named erdem gunduz has become the new symbol of the protest movement. nicknamed "the standing man," he attracted international attention for standing quietly in taksim square for eight hours on monday to protest the police crackdown on protesters. images and video of him standing silently in the square have gone viral and inspired similar passive resistance protests across turkey. >> for the latest from turkey with a istanbul where we're joined by na

i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. >> welcome to all our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. we begin today's show in syria. pro-government forces have seized control of the key border town of qusair, which have been controlled by rebel fighters for the past year. qusair, which lies on a cross border supply route with neighboring lebanon, had been the site of a fierce battle over the past two weeks as fighters from the lebanese militant group hezbollah joined forces aligned with then-president bashar al- assad. since fighting broke out over two years ago in syria, more than 80,000 people have been killed and another 1.6 million syrian refugees have fled. earlier this week, the united nations accused both sides of the syrian conflict of reaching "new levels of brutality." the u.n. panel chair paulo pinheiro accused government forces of murder, torture, rape, forcible displacement and other acts, many of them carried out systematically against civilians. but he said anti assad rebels were

i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. >> we turn now to a debate on edward snowden's decision to leak trove of secret documents outlining the nsa's surveillance program. in an interview with the guardian newspaper, snowden described why he risked his career to leak the documents. >> i think the public is owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic mode. when you are subverting the power of government, that is a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy. and if you do that in secret consistently, as the government does when it wants to benefit from a secret action that it took, it will kind of give its officials a mandate to go, tell the press about this thing and that thing, so the public is on our side. they rarely if ever do that when an abuse occurs. that falls to individual citizens, but they're typically maligned. it becomes a thing of, these people are against the country, against the government. but i am not. i am no different from anyone else but i don't have special skills. i am just another guy who s

shaikh. nermeen was a crowning achievement of the civil-rights movement and helped transform the south. on tuesday in a 5-4 decision, the justices ruled congress had used obsolete information in continuing to require nine states mainly in the south to obtain federal approval for voting will changes affecting minority voters. the voting rights act was challenged by shelby county alabama which argued the clearance requirement had outlived its usefulness. congressman john lewis of georgia reacted to the ruling. he was nearly killed when he participated in the 1965 bloody sunday march to selma, alabama to demand the right to vote. i was disappointed because i think webcor did today -- i was disappointed because i think what the court did today was stabbed the voting rights act in the heart. we may not have people beaten today. maybe they are now being denied the right to participate or to register to vote, they are not being chased by police dogs or trampled by horses, but in the 11 states in the old con