General Idi Amin VC, DSO, MC, King of Scotland, last week surfaced from his coma in his retirement home in Saudi Arabia to allow himself a beaming, cannibalistic smile.
The Irish Government, he had heard, was going to continue to give aid to Uganda, but at a lower level than central government. Excellent, he chuckled: Europeans were once again being gulled by his fellow countrymen, and he drifted happily back to sleep again, and to dreams of tasty loin of infant in its own sauce.
To be fair to President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, cannibalism is almost certainly off the menu - so to speak - in the presidential palace in Kampala. Moreover, mass murder of his citizens no longer appears to be a primary part of his programme of government, (though of course, one never can tell in that unfortunate country, where vegan dinner parties can start off with carrot soup, and continue with blood sausage and fried eyelids).
But mass murder of another country's citizens: ah, that now, is an altogether more palatable proposition.
Uganda has an army of conquerors, rapists and murderers in the Congo, their primary purpose to bleed it dry; though a bit of recreational killing is always good for the lads' morale: man doth not live by bread alone, as the good Lord once said. Well, all right, I'm being economical with the truth: not just a bit of recreational killing, but a lot of it.
Nobody's counting - perhaps because a great many of the citizens of the Congo no longer have any fingers to count with - but several million people have already been killed in the war there.
And in addition to this war of conquest, the internal government of Uganda is hopelessly corrupt. So instead of the Irish Government announcing that it would no longer give money to the Ugandan government in any form, it has announced that it will give aid just to regional and local government instead. Tom Kitt, the Minister for Overseas Co-operation And Being Duped, has announced that the new means of allocating the money would be the equivalent of giving money directly to Micheal Martin and Noel Dempsey instead of Charlie McCreevy.
Is that it? Is that the extent of the Government's understanding of Uganda? That there's one bad egg at the top, but otherwise, governance is smooth and efficient lower down, a regular little Luxembourg, and look, here comes the bus, right on time as always? Good morning driver, a ticket for the health clinic, my good man, and what a fine morning it is. Thank you.
It's not Luxembourg. It's Uganda, a country where money in government accounts vanishes like water down the Victoria Falls: about $100 million of it a year. But at least that is money which makes its way into the accounts. How much more money simply never has any audited existence at all is another question entirely; and here I feel tempted to use the term "black economy", except the term might be misunderstood.
In our new severe dispensation, we will continue to give aid - some €32 million of it - to Uganda, to the local equivalent of Micheal and Noel.
But why? Why on earth should we add anything to the resources of a state which is a voluntary participant in the most atrocious war the world has seen since 1945? And if we really wish to waste money, we could do so in other ways. We could, for example, burn it. Or shred it.
Giving it to Uganda is the equivalent of handing over millions to John Gilligan; except that what Tom Kitt is now proposing to do is to hand it over to Dutchie Holland instead. A great improvement.
Even at the best of times, it would be morally feckless to fund the present corrupt and brutal Ugandan government: but we now know these are not the best of times. Money that is being scattered like propaganda leaflets over the Serengeti is money not being spent here.
So, if you're diagnosed positive for cancer in Ireland today, you might have to wait five weeks before you can begin to get chemotherapy; and meanwhile the tumour inside you is scanning the property section of your body, looking for new places to take up residence.
For the money that didn't go to build the cancer unit (which is not now saving your life) is now making the Mercedes dealer in Kampala a very happy man indeed. Ah yes, tears of mirth rolling down his cheeks: and would the Minister like this ultra-soft kid-leather upholstery in his top of the range Kompressor Coupé?
The reality is that our Third World aid programmes are less about real, achieved result than they are a glorious PR exercise for internal consumption, a vast bribe to our self-esteem.
We're spending money for the sake of it, without even knowing how. The end result is that we're funding a country which is engaged in a war of conquest against a helpless neighbour - rather like putting cheques in the post to Herr Hitler in 1939.
But what should we be doing? Well, there isn't a government in Africa which deserves a single farthing of our money. So what about all the unfortunate people of the continent, racked with famine, drought, and disease of every kind?
If we are going to spend money in Africa - and I'm not at all convinced that we should - there are extremely efficient Irish agencies through which we could channel and control our funds. After all, charities begin at home.