This week on CounterSpin: If you're a Beltway pundit or media bigshot, the report issued by the Iraq Study Group was a big deal. The group's recommendations were Page One fodder for days on end, but a good question to ask might be: Why? While the report dazzled the press corps, what about the rest of us? Tom Englehardt of the Nation Institute will join us to talk about it.

Also on CounterSpin: World AIDS Day came and went—and much like with Labor Day, an issue that could provide compelling stories every day of the week has been relegated once again to back pages. It's surely this kind of lackluster treatment that helps generate what our guest calls a major gap between the world's collective understanding of AIDS and the conversation here in the U.S.. Yifat Susskind is communications director for MADRE, the women's human rights organization.

Links:

—Tom Engelhardt's TomDispatch

—MADRE