It's A Start: Canada Cuts Off Relations With Iran as Great Britain Labels Hezbollah As Terrorists

Over the last few days, there have been a couple of hopeful signs that maybe, just maybe, the West is coming around to the novel idea that those who support terrorism should be labeled as such.

For example -- on Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper cut off diplomatic relations with Iran. Benjamin Weinthal writes in Why Canada branded the Iranian regime as terrorists that Foreign Minister John Baird explains:

The Middle East Media Sampler 8/20/2012: Europe Gives Hezbollah Terrorists Free Hand

From DG:

1) Nice continent you have there ... shame if anything happened to it

The New York Times reports Despite Alarm by U.S., Europe Lets Hezbollah Operate Openly. There's a lot of material in this article: some of it good and some of it disappointing spin. Notable though is the illustrative photograph of a crowd (apparently in Lebanon) giving full fisted salutes to Sheikh Nasrallah.

Washington and Jerusalem insist that Hezbollah is an Iranian-backed terrorist organization with bloody hands, and that it is working closely with Tehran to train, arm and finance the Syrian military’s lethal repression of the uprising there. Yet, the European Union continues to treat it foremost as a Lebanese political and social movement.