Despite living in a very big world, most of us don’t venture out past our favorite sites (such as Independent Sources) or the odd story we might find on Technorati. Americans in particular don’t often get outside the U.S., even on the Internet, and when they do it can be intimidating. To help you “travel” abroad, Independent Sources has ventured out to locate some international sites that we think you might enjoy. Bon Voyage!

Our trip starts in Italy, the boot shaped country known for pizza and hand-waving. What people don’t know is that it is also the home of a damn fine pro-American blog. Here is a sample of what The Right Nation has to say:

Radio Equalizer e Michelle Malkin continuano a picchiare duro sullo scandalo Air America. E stavolta, grazie agli ultimi sviluppi del loro (straordinario) lavoro investigativo, riescono a fare immediatamente breccia nel muro eretto dai mainstream media a protezione di Al Franken e compagni, meritandosi l’attenzione di New York Sun e Philadelphia Enquirer.

Which translates to:

Radio Equalizer and Michelle Malkin keep on hitting hard on the Air America scandal. And this time, thanks to the last developments of their (outstanding) investigative job, they accomplished to breach the wall built by mainstream media to protect Al Franken & Co, by deserving the attention of New York Sun and Philadelphia Enquirer.

We know this because the Right Nation has an English version too. In fact the only thing they are missing is having Independent Sources on their blog roll.

For the UK, we suggest Tim Worstall, who we quoted frequently during our London Bombing coverage.Most of you know Tim’s blog, so we won’t spend much time here.

After enjoying Europe, let’s come back to North America, where some of you will be surprised to learn that there are foreigners in North America too! Yep, there in Mexico (which you might have thought was in South America, but it’s not) and Canada (which you might have thought was part of the U.S. (but it’s not!).

Let’s first go to Mexico, where despite fears that NAFTA would lead to thousands of bloggers heading south to Mexico and taking all of those blogging jobs with them,  there are really only a few good sites. Our favorite is..Mark in Mexico (which incidentally was the source of Independent Sources “Do Not, I Repeat, Do Not Piss off this Woman.”).

Then there is Canada, which due to our bizarre fixation with Hans Island, is like a second home to us. There are so many good Canadian sites that we recommend just starting with Angry in the Great White North and trying out some of the folks on his blogroll. The great thing about Canadian blogs is that they are in English (we are conveniently ignoring the issue of Quebec). In fact, most Canadians speak English is so well that you almost think they are American until you come across a word like “Saskatchewan” and you think “where the heck am I?” In all, you will find most Canadian blogs to be quite enjoyable.

Of course, of you are going to ask, “What about France? Surely, there must be at least one good French blog.” Well, if there is, we sure couldn’t find it. So to fill the gap, we created translated one of our more popular French stories into French so that you could enjoy the experience without having to actually encounter any French people:

Influence d’hésitation de France’s sur la culture ? Objet exposé Un : Starbucks

À Paris, où l’image de cliché est celle d’un ensemble littéraire recueillant le pernod fini pour détester la globalisation et ses antécédents américains, un des signes les plus baissants de la défaite culturelle à beaucoup est la présence de Starbucks. La chaîne de café a ouvert trois magasins à Paris et a des plans ambitieux pour une douzaine environ plus.

À nouveau Paris Starbucks près de l’arrêt de métro d’opéra, les français se sont approchés pour une entrevue ont semblé honteux sur un certain niveau profond être là mais sur cet arrêt de doesn’t il de l’emballage comme le Français McDonald les concessions les serrent en chaque jour au déjeuner.

 Il y a un accord de nos jours qu’une rigidité nationale et une aversion à risquer ont arrêté le développement de France’s.  déclin de “The de la France, ” ; a étonné l’industrie d’édition en devenant un best-seller. Au sujet de la France, l’auteur dit :

“There est un espace énorme entre l’élite et la classe politique de vieillissement et la société qu’elle représente, un espace énorme entre l’effort rhétorique de la puissance et le vrai moyen de la puissance militaire et économique. L’économie française est statique relativement à ceux autour d’elle, particulièrement l’Espagne et l’Irlande et le R-U. Le PIB dans ces pays se développe, le chômage diminue solidement. Mais la France est coincée au même levels.” ;

Il y a sont également plusieurs autres livres avec les titres semblables comme “France dans Fall” libre ; ou “French Arrogance”; maintenant sur le marché.

Ce art de l’auto-portrait-humility présage-t-il une rotation pour la société française ? Dans un mot, “non, ” ; parce qu’en France là reste un espace énorme entre râler au sujet d’un problème et accepter la douleur qui est associée à le fixer.

English version of this well-received piece is here.

We hope you enjoyed your world tour and as they say, the best thing about traveling is getting back. To celebrate being back in the good ole’ USA, here are three blogs right here in the USA you might want to check out.

• Huffington’s Toast
• Alarming News
• GOP Vixen

This entry was posted on Monday, August 22nd, 2005 at 10:11 am by Insider and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.