Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition, 3rd Edition

8Saving a Country from Communism

I had a romanticized vision of Indonesia, the country where I was to live for the next three months. Some of the books I read featured photographs of women in brightly colored sarongs, Balinese dancers, shamans blowing fire, and warriors paddling long dugout canoes in emerald waters at the foot of smoking volcanoes. Particularly striking was a series on the magnificent, black-sailed galleons of the infamous Bugi pirates, who still sailed the seas of the archipelago, and who had so terrorized early European sailors that they returned home to warn their children, “Behave yourselves, or the Bugimen will get you.” Oh, how those pictures stirred my soul.

The history and legends of that country represent a cornucopia ...