Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, is the citizen of another country and an elected member of the British parliament. The U.S. politicians, serving the interests and expressing the attitude of the billionaire U.S. ruling class, went so far as to issue the date on which he was to appear before them -- April 24.

The summons by the House International Relations Committee in the course of an investigation into so-called "terrorism," is the height of imperial arrogance and a violation of national sovereignty. The politicians' stance is reminiscent of the Caesars who ruled the Roman empire in its latter stages where the emperor's summons to his subjects superseded all other obligations and prerogatives.

The U.S. rulers' approach is no aberration, of course. It is consistent with their overall course of deepening the domination of U.S. imperialism around the world. Bent on defending their own class interests, the borders and laws of other nations become simply temporary nuisances as they assert their "right" to extraterritorial fishing operations, arrests, prosecution.

Another example of this same approach is the stepped-up secret arrests of people in other countries by U.S. authorities who kidnap them to Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere to be subjected to torture and interrogation methods officially not allowed in the United States.

A new outrage in Washington's four-decade war against the Cuban Revolution is the conviction of a citizen of another country in a U.S. court on charges of violating the U.S. Trading with the Enemy Act. The Canadian, employed by a U.S. subsidiary in Canada, sold water purification equipment to Cuba. The convicted man now faces the possibility of spending many years behind bars in a U.S. prison.

There are big stakes for working people in these developments. Washington's moves abroad go hand in hand with its attacks at home on workers' rights and on important legal and constitutional protections. Workers, farmers, young fighters, and all those who stand with the struggle against imperialism, whether conducted in Palestine, Ireland, Afghanistan, or wherever, should oppose the imperial summons and all such violations of national sovereignty.  
 
 
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