Select reviews for
The Cage
“This powerful book is a reminder of the price countries pay for flawed choices”
– THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“An excellent account”
– THE ECONOMIST
“This shattering tale of savagery lifts the veil
and helps us understand”
– NOAM CHOMSKY
“A parable of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil”
– THE SPECTATOR
(best summer reading 2011)
“Weiss provides harrowing details, as well as insight”
– FOREIGN AFFAIRS
(book of the day, April 2016)
“A striking account”
– THE SUNDAY TIMES
“Unpicks the roots of the problem”
– THE LITERARY REVIEW"
“Tightly-written, clear-eyed, a riveting cautionary tale.
A must-read”
– JON LEE ANDERSON
New Yorker staff writer
“A compellingly readable account...
scrupulously even handed”
– GARETH EVANS
fmr Australian Foreign Minister
“Essential reading”
– THE AUSTRALIAN
“Deeply informed, humane and compassionate… a beautifully articulated insight into the human experience.”
– THE INTERCEPT
(Best Summer Reading List 2015)
“A knockout blow. No wonder the government had it taken off the shelves; it does not want you to read it”
– THE ISLAND (Sri Lanka)
Media
Channel 4 UK
ABC TV
Interview
A part of a friend's documentary
Lecture
Australian National University
New York Times
Announcing a 'bloodbath' during the war.
Bio brief
After working as a tradesman, then in business, and journalism, I joined the UN for two decades in peacekeeping, political, and humanitarian missions in some of the world’s toughest zones, deploying strategic communications to resolve hostage, political, and public diplomatic crises.
I began my international public service work with the OSCE in 1997, and then managed large teams for the UN in Bosnia and Kosovo, before I was relocated for a year to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the days immediately following 9/11.
As UNICEF's head of Emergency Communications based in New York, I dealt with a full range of complex development, emergency, aid and security issues, with boots-on-the-ground in theatres of conflict and natural disaster in Africa, India, former Soviet Central Asia, the Western Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. I was the head of UN communications during the final three years of Sri Lanka's civil war and, from 2015 to 2018, the head of Global Communications for UN-Habitat, based in Kenya.
Between UN engagements I was a visiting scholar at Sydney University’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (department of Political Science), and a research professor at Griffith University’s Asia Institute (department of Government). I was a joint founder of the International Crimes Evidence Project, a director for ActionAid Australia, and I am currently a Senior Fellow of the ARTIS International group, applying research and social science insights to a range of policy, stability, and human development issues including terrorism and radicalisation.
I am the son of an immigrant who became an early female judge in Australia, and a refugee whose family was extinguished during the Holocaust. As a teenager he learned English while labouring on Australia's great Snowy Mountains River Hydroelectric Scheme, before studying to be a lawyer.
I lived for extended periods in New York, Ashgabat, London, Prishtina, Colombo, Sydney, Barcelona, Sarajevo, Tokyo, Nairobi, Luanda, and Islamabad. I currently live between Prague and the port of Newcastle, Australia, to which the Scots part of my family immigrated in 1850. I raised two girls (and numerous other animals) with my Turkmen/Belorussian partner, a public health specialist and chef.
Photojournalism
The points of light project
The Sucker’s Break
© 2018