"NATO is losing the war in Afghanistan in every quantifiable way," says Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films, recently returned from a reporting trip to that country. And what's more, he notes, what's clear from the WikiLeaks cables is that the coalition governments are not as deluded as they would like their people to be about the reality on the ground in Afghanistan.

"In truth, we face the sobering reality that capitalism’s latest crisis — complete with bank failures, corporate bailouts, rising unemployment, and declining wages — has aided the right, not the left. How can we explain the capacity of the right to benefit from and redirect the bitterness and discontent that derives from capitalism’s own failures?"

Rick Rowley is just one of the unembedded, independent reporters trying to bring the real story from Afghanistan to the American people. Our friends at Brave New Films also have teams of independent media makers in that country, and this segment takes us inside their dangerous work.

"NATO is losing the war in Afghanistan in every quantifiable way," says Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films, recently returned from a reporting trip to that country. And what's more, he notes, what's clear from the WikiLeaks cables is that the coalition governments are not as deluded as they would like their people to be about the reality on the ground in Afghanistan.

There's a new blockbuster out just in time for the holidays: Harry Potter and the Bailed-Out Banks. Here's a synopsis: While students in London spend hours in the cold protesting tuition fees that may soon triple, RBS, a bank that took a huge government bailout, throws a party commemorating one famous British student: Harry Potter. (Of course, Potter went to an exclusive private school.)

"The breakdown of trust in all institutions--political, financial, media--is at the center of what we're all dealing with," Arianna Huffington notes the connection between the failures of all of our major institutions and the rise of WikiLeaks as an alternative to traditional news. When the traditional media is too close to the political and financial elites they are supposed to cover, who do we turn to for the truth?

While we talk about the consequences for journalism and the Internet from the WikiLeaks releases, it's important not to forget what's actually in the cables that are causing a stir. Former British diplomat Carne Ross discusses the contents of the cables and what they mean for those watching--and those mentioned therein.

"We do not have the Internet we think we have," says Douglas Rushkoff, author of Program or Be Programmed. What we think of as a free and open Web is actually highly controlled by corporations and cash flow. We saw one example of this when WikiLeaks found itself without server space or fundraising ability when Internet service providers, including Amazon.com, cancelled their services and PayPal and MasterCard and Visa refused to process their transactions.

"The sources are voting with their leaks," notes Jay Rosen of New York University's school of journalism. If the watchdog press was doing its job, wouldn't leakers be going to mainstream news outlets like the New York Times and the Guardian directly, instead of to WikiLeaks first? Meanwhile, Emily Bell, formerly of the Guardian and now at Columbia University's journalism school, says that whether we like it or not, WikiLeaks is the new face of journalism.

This weekend, the Personal Democracy Forum convened a symposium on WikiLeaks and the Internet. GRITtv was there as well, and today we bring you excerpts from that event, with journalists, academics, activists, and others talking about the impact of the leaks site on our political and technological systems.