Creates a list of countries names scraped from State.gov

get_countries.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
#Written by: Adam Walsh
#Written on 7/23/14
#Gets a current list of countries from state.gov
from selenium import webdriver

sel = webdriver.Firefox()
sel.get("http://www.state.gov/misc/list/")
content = sel.find_element_by_id('tier3-landing-content-wide')
content = content.find_element_by_tag_name('table')
content = content.find_element_by_tag_name('div')
content = content.find_element_by_tag_name('div')
content = content.find_element_by_tag_name('div')
content = content.find_element_by_tag_name('div')
countries = []
for item in content.find_elements_by_tag_name('blockquote'):
    for link in item.find_elements_by_tag_name('a'):
        countries.append(link.text.encode('ascii','ignore'))
print countries
sel.close()

Note that this list does not include the US.