And the nightmare started. I think it was Alfred Hitchcock who said reality is worse than any scary film and this is reality - just a few hours ago North Korea claimed a nuclear test.

It's only days since I wrote an article about nuclear weapons taking the chance of the twenty years since Mordechai Vanunu, a former worker at an Israeli nuclear power plant, gave the British newspapers detailed descriptions and photos of Israeli nuclear warheads. It's only days since, in a conversation under the very same article, I expressed my fear that when countries like North Korea and Iran talk about nuclear energy plants they really talk about bombs. It didn’t take long for the People’s Republic to announce proudly that: "The nuclear test will contribute to maintaining peace and stability in the Korean peninsula and surrounding region."

So, fear maintains peace and stability? Hitler inspired fear, Stalin inspired fear, and how much peace and stability did they bring? Writing these words, I feel so sad, all the hopes we had laid upon the UN and the Security Council for a better way than wars has seemed to vanish. They are going to have an urgent meeting, probably this very moment, and what are they are going to do? What was to be done has been done. Who’s next? Iran? Let’s see how many more dictatorships there are around?

Even China, the only ally North Korea has any kind of understanding, seems shocked, expressing its ‘resolute opposition’ and North Korea’s ‘defied universal opposition of international society’. For the ones who follow Chinese politics, this was not a friendly reaction. The Japanese government is in an emergency meeting and the South Koreans are talking with their American allies to find out how they are going to react.

The EU council hasn’t woken up yet and they are probably in the labyrinth of their bureaucracy looking for a negotiations formula. Perhaps they will use the same one they used with Iran!

Every single year the UN food program has North Korea as a priority, since there are people there with great needs. The very same people the North Korean government made ‘proud’ today. For years, there have been rumours about tests and experiments in North Korea, and it is not long since the rumour of a village somewhere in the east part of the country had mysteriously emptied from people due to a…cloud!

Well, the cloud is mushroom-shape and now we can see it from Europe despite its underground life. And we have felt the smell as well, and the smell is not peace, it is fear!