To make things worse, President Bush will be among the fifty world leaders attending the conference and one can only wonder if he will sign off on the proposal.

Consider the list of world conferences the United Nations has sponsored in just the passed decade. Conferences on children (1990); on the environment (1992); on human rights (1993); on global governance (1993 & 1995); on world trade (1994); on world population (1994); on social development (1995); on sustainable development (1995); on women (1995); on human habitats (1996); on global warming (1996); on the International Criminal court (1998); and its Millennium Assembly and Summit in 2000. There was an aborted conference on racial prejudice in 2001 that was so filled with hatred it swiftly sank into the mire of its own hypocrisy.

Let me borrow a sentence from the Declaration of Independence, by action of the Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

The United States fought the War of Independence over the issue of "taxation without representation." Who represents you at the United Nations? A single appointed ambassador! With one vote in the General Assembly!

This week, in Monterey, Mexico, the UN High Level Panel of Financing Development will meet. The United Nations was set up to be financed by dues from its member states, but the UN has been cautiously working toward becoming financially independent of its own members by imposing a series of taxes that would increase its income by trillions.

These taxes would include those on international and other air transportation, the use of all coal, oil and natural gas, taxes on all currency transactions, and a dozen others they have lined up such as taxes on weapons exports, the Internet, and who knows what else?

The UN Conference in Mexico will propose consolidating all international financial and development institutions under its control. If the UN were to control which nations receive development funding and which do not, it will have a total chokehold on the future over every nation. It will even propose that immigrants will have to pay taxes not only to their new nation of residence, but the one from which they may well have fled!

With trillions, the cabal that runs the United Nations would no longer have to take notice of the United States or any other nation. It would soon be putting together its own vast military force capable of invading any nation to impose its will. The UN already has an International Court that already claims jurisdiction over every nation and its citizens, even if that nation is not a signatory to the conference that created it.

What is at stake here is the prospect of raw, unlimited power in the hands of people who are not elected by anyone other than themselves, if they can get their hands on the money to achieve this goal!

Who would support such an obscenity? How about former President Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State, Strobe Talbot, who said, "Nationhood as we know it will be obsolete, all states will recognize a single, global authority, and national sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all."

Multiply Talbot by the unknown, countless people in Congress and elsewhere throughout our government, along with others ranging from openly communist or socialist organizations to so-called environmental organizations, the people who run multinational corporations who see profit signs if there are no borders or restraints, the mysterious clique who run some of nation's wealthiest foundations, and all the others who see themselves acquiring power and wealth under the aegis of the United Nations.

No single event occurring in the world during the second week of March 2002 has the importance of this United Nations conference. Unless its goals are utterly defeated, the rights of the citizens of the United States of America, as defined and protected by our Constitution, will disappear and, along with those of every other citizen of the world, we shall become the slaves of the UN.

Alan Caruba is the author of "The United Nations Vs. The United States", a pocket guide available exclusively from the website of The National Anxiety Center. His weekly commentary, "Warning Signs", is posted there as well.