> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://aitrading67.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Week of the Discarded — A Pope in Paris Against the “Paradise of Machines”, a President at the UN Who Wants to Rename AI, and China’s “Wall-Hung” Young - URL: https://aitrading67.com/en/osservatorio-2026-09-28/ - Published: 2026-09-28T08:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-29T06:30:38.000Z - Description: Two liturgies, four days apart, on the same subject. At the UN Trump wants AI renamed superintelligence; in Paris Leo XIV warns 700,000 people about a paradise of machines. In between: Rome counting foreign pupils per classroom, and China’s wall-hung young. - Author: Fabio Gentili - Tags: lang-en, observatory World Observatory · Society & Culture The Week of the Discarded — A Pope in Paris Against the “Paradise of Machines”, a President at the UN Who Wants to Rename AI, and China’s “Wall-Hung” Young September 28, 2026 — Fabio Gentili observatory22 – 28 September 2026 Editorial Two liturgies, four days apart, on the same subject. On Tuesday the 22nd, from the rostrum of the UN General Assembly, Donald Trump proposed we stop calling it artificial intelligence at all: “the use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake. It’s not fake.” The right name, he said, is superintelligence, and the rule of the century fits in five words — “whoever wins superintelligence wins.” On Friday the 25th, at the Élysée and then at UNESCO, Leo XIV used the same hours to say the precise opposite: minds must urgently be trained in “ethical discernment”, or we risk what he called, quoting Georges Bernanos, a “Paradise of Machines” built on blind obedience and irresponsibility, and the danger is not technical but anthropological — lives “judged according to the criterion of efficiency and, when deemed no longer productive, rejected and discarded.” Hold on to that last word. *Discarded* is the thread running through seven otherwise unrelated days. In Rome the cabinet passed a decree banning face coverings in schools and capping non-Italian-speaking pupils at 30 percent per class — a measure that, by the education minister’s own arithmetic, will touch roughly a thousand classrooms, 0.3 percent of the national total. That is not schools policy; it is a boundary drawn for the benefit of the people watching. In Shenzhen, meanwhile, the internet has settled on a new word: *guàbì*, “hung on the wall”, like an object left there and forgotten. It describes young people who have given up the search for steady work and for relationships at the same time — not the proud refusal of *tang ping*, but a quiet ejection from the circuit. Then there is politics, which in Europe moved in two opposite directions in the same week. In Germany the AfD, having taken nearly 38 percent in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and pushed Merz’s CDU out of the state parliament altogether at 4.9, spent Wednesday handing the chancellor a governing agenda and claiming the mantle of people’s party. In Britain, the reverse: Reform UK slipped to third, behind Labour and the Conservatives. The populist tide, it turns out, is not weather. It depends on who is occupying the space on the other side. And in the United States the Democrats reach the final forty days eleven points ahead — and lose, by a single vote on the floor, the resolution that would have ended the war with Iran. Winning the polls and losing the institutions is the working definition of an opposition that does not yet hold power. --- In this issue 1. [A pope fills secular Paris while the right splits two ways](#sez-en-1) 2. [Eleven points ahead in the polls, one vote short on the floor](#sez-en-2) 3. [A festival of reunion, and a new word for those with none](#sez-en-3) 4. [Two grammars for one technology](#sez-en-4) --- Geographic area summary 🇪🇺 EUROPE A pope fills secular Paris while the right splits two ways High tension 700,000 at the Concorde, a Decree in Rome, a Governing Agenda from the AfD France: 700,000–800,000 at Leo XIV’s Mass on the 26th — nearly triple Benedict XVI’s 250,000 in 2008 — on the first papal state visit in 18 years; Macron skipped every public Mass, Marine Le Pen attended (NCR; NBC News). Italy: the cabinet turned the school measures into a decree-law — face coverings banned, fines to €1,000, a 30% cap on non-Italian-speaking pupils. Valditara concedes it touches \~1,000 classes, 0.3% of the total; Schlein calls it “a shameful decree” (Al Jazeera, Sept 25; France 24, Sept 24). Germany: after \~38% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and the CDU’s 4.9% wipe-out, on the 23rd the AfD handed Merz a policy agenda and Weidel claimed the people’s-party mantle; Foreign Policy judged Merz’s authority gone (Bloomberg; FP, Sept 24). Britain, against the grain: a YouGov MRP on the 24th put Reform UK third behind Labour and the Tories; Burnham’s first conference opened the 27th with Labour still short of a majority at 241 seats (Bloomberg; The Independent; AP). 🇺🇸 USA Eleven points ahead in the polls, one vote short on the floor High tension Emerson Puts Democrats +11 as the Iran War Powers Vote Fails 49–50 Emerson (Sept 24, fielded 21–22): Democrats 53–42 on the generic ballot; independents 60–31; Hispanic voters 64–31; Trump at 39/58, his worst of the term. The reversal that matters: 60% say his economic policies are making things worse (49% in April 2025), and economy-first voters break Democratic 55–41 — the mirror image of 2024. But on the 24th the Senate killed the Iran war powers resolution 49–50: four Republicans crossed over, Fetterman crossed back (NPR; Washington Post). Courts and streets: Trump’s suit against pollster Ann Selzer dismissed; the CNN/MS NOW/Politico press ban reversed in 12 hours; 100+ arrested at a Jewish Voice for Peace sit-in outside the UN; House Democrats cite 342 detainees in a 50-capacity ICE facility (Democracy Now!). The counter-fact: the Boston Globe’s anatomy of why tech, big law, the universities and the media folded — “the fallacy of small-sample benchmarking” (Sept 25). 🇨🇳 CHINA A festival of reunion, and a new word for those with none High tension “Guàbì”: China Names the Young Who Have Stepped Out of the Circuit A new term, reported on the 25th: guàbì, “hung on the wall” — young people who give up steady work and personal ties together, living at the margins on minimal income (Seoul Economic Daily). Not lying flat: tang ping was a claimed refusal; guàbì is expulsion — economic shocks, family breakdown, severed ties. Examples: a man sleeping in a 24-hour Shenzhen billiard hall on 20 yuan; a Zunyi internet café at 0.6 yuan an hour. The backdrop: 17.9% youth unemployment (16–24, ex-students) in July, 7.2% for 25–29, and 12.7 million graduates in 2026, up \~4%. The other China, same week: 650M trips over the Mid-Autumn holiday, reunion catering +105%, mooncakes +157%, low-sugar mooncake searches +320%, European mooncake sales +1,500% (Global Times, Sept 27). 🌐 GLOBAL TRENDS Two grammars for one technology Medium tension “Whoever Wins Superintelligence Wins” — and “Slow Down” The 81st General Assembly’s theme reads like a diagnosis: “Restoring trust, managing transformation” (UN News). Tuesday’s grammar was the race; Friday’s was the limit — a pope asking developers and governments to slow down and open a real conversation with the tech companies (OPB; CNBC). The weak signal: a non-technical, non-regulatory vocabulary for criticising automation is entering Western debate, moving the argument from efficiency to dignity — and 700,000 people in the capital of laïcité suggest it has an audience. Deadlock watch: Sweden still has no government two weeks after voting (176–173); the Netherlands governs on 66 of 150 seats. Fragmentation no longer produces alternation (The Rio Times, Sept 26). --- Weekly deep-dive Focus Efficiency as a Criterion — and the People It Leaves Outside Rome counts foreign pupils per classroom, Shenzhen names the young who have stepped out, and a pope tells the Élysée that lives judged by productivity end up discarded. The week’s two set-piece speeches were about the same machine. One asked the world to run faster towards it; the other asked what happens to the people it measures. Between those two poles sat every other story of the period. France: 700,000–800,000 at the Concorde, nearly 3× 2008 · Italy: face-covering ban, 30% cap, \~1,000 classes (0.3%) · Germany: AfD \~38%, CDU 4.9% and out · UK: Reform UK third in a YouGov MRP · US: Democrats +11, war powers lost 49–50 · China: youth jobless 17.9%, 650M holiday trips. Note what the Italian decree actually does: almost nothing, by the minister’s own count. Its function is not administrative but cartographic — it draws a line and shows people where it is. The same instinct, differently expressed, runs through the German firewall debate and the American fight over who counts as a legitimate voter. “Lives judged according to the criterion of efficiency and, when deemed no longer productive, rejected and discarded.” China supplies the version with no politics attached at all. Guàbì is not a movement, a protest or a slogan. It is a word for people the growth machine has simply set down — and the fact that popular language needed such a word in the same week the country celebrated its festival of family reunion is the most eloquent thing that happened anywhere. --- Conclusions The Race and the Brake, Measured in People Two speeches, four days apart, gave the week its shape: one treating intelligence as a contest to be won, the other treating it as a test of what we are prepared to discard. Everything else slotted in underneath. Italy legislated a boundary that touches 0.3 percent of its classrooms and all of its politics. Germany watched a governing party fall below the threshold in a state it used to run, and the winner respond not with triumph but with a policy agenda — the behaviour of a party that expects to govern. Britain, alone, saw the populist right recede. And the Americans produced the week’s cleanest paradox: the best polling of the cycle, and a war they cannot stop by a single vote, in a country whose largest private institutions have already decided not to fight. The lesson is not that the opposition is weak. It is that electoral strength and institutional strength have come apart — and, as China’s new vocabulary suggests, the people who fall through that gap rarely get a vote on it. --- Sources & references [ 01 UN News — Trump defends military action against Iran, Venezuela, and calls for rebrand of AI September 22, 2026 https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/09/1168397 ](https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/09/1168397) [ 02 CNN — Key moments from the first day of UN General Assembly speeches September 22, 2026 https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/22/world/live-news/un-general-assembly-trump ](https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/22/world/live-news/un-general-assembly-trump) [ 03 UN News — The world comes to New York: What’s at stake this General Assembly High-Level Week September 2026 https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/09/1168344 ](https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/09/1168344) [ 04 Bloomberg — German AfD Presses CDU With Policy Agenda Following State Victories September 23, 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-23/german-far-right-wargames-policy-agenda-with-overture-to-merz ](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-23/german-far-right-wargames-policy-agenda-with-overture-to-merz) [ 05 Foreign Policy — Germany Under Friedrich Merz Has Lost Its Authority at Home and Abroad September 24, 2026 https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/09/24/germany-merz-authority-lost-elections-afd/ ](https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/09/24/germany-merz-authority-lost-elections-afd/) [ 06 The Rio Times — Europe Intelligence Brief, Thursday, September 24, 2026 September 24, 2026 https://www.riotimesonline.com/europe-intelligence-brief-thursday-september-24-2026/ ](https://www.riotimesonline.com/europe-intelligence-brief-thursday-september-24-2026/) [ 07 The Rio Times — Europe Intelligence Brief, Saturday, September 26, 2026 September 26, 2026 https://www.riotimesonline.com/europe-intelligence-brief-saturday-september-26-2026/ ](https://www.riotimesonline.com/europe-intelligence-brief-saturday-september-26-2026/) [ 08 Bloomberg — Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Slips Behind Labour and Tories in New MRP Poll September 24, 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-24/farage-s-reform-slips-behind-labour-and-tories-in-new-mrp-poll ](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-24/farage-s-reform-slips-behind-labour-and-tories-in-new-mrp-poll) [ 09 The Independent (via inkl) — Reform fall to third in polls as Labour’s ‘Burnham bounce’ continues September 24, 2026 https://www.inkl.com/news/reform-fall-to-third-in-polls-as-labours-burnham-bounce-continues ](https://www.inkl.com/news/reform-fall-to-third-in-polls-as-labours-burnham-bounce-continues) [ 10 AP / The Washington Times — Andy Burnham brings good vibes to Labour’s annual conference but tough choices are coming September 27, 2026 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/sep/27/british-pm-andy-burnham-brings-good-vibes-labours-annual-conference/ ](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/sep/27/british-pm-andy-burnham-brings-good-vibes-labours-annual-conference/) [ 11 Al Jazeera — Meloni government bans burqas, caps foreign students in Italian schools September 25, 2026 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/25/meloni-government-bans-burqas-caps-foreign-students-in-italian-schools ](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/25/meloni-government-bans-burqas-caps-foreign-students-in-italian-schools) [ 12 France 24 / AFP — Italy bans burqas in schools, caps numbers of foreign students per class September 24, 2026 https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260924-italy-bans-burqas-in-schools-caps-numbers-of-foreign-students-per-class ](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260924-italy-bans-burqas-in-schools-caps-numbers-of-foreign-students-per-class) [ 13 Reuters / U.S. News — Beset by Far-Right Rival, Italy’s Meloni Tightens Foreign Pupil Rules September 24, 2026 https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-09-24/beset-by-far-right-rival-italys-meloni-tightens-foreign-pupil-rules ](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-09-24/beset-by-far-right-rival-italys-meloni-tightens-foreign-pupil-rules) [ 14 NPR — Pope warns a ‘paradise of machines’ could undermine humanity as he opens France trip September 26, 2026 https://www.npr.org/2026/09/26/g-s1-145150/pope-warns-a-paradise-of-machines-could-undermine-humanity ](https://www.npr.org/2026/09/26/g-s1-145150/pope-warns-a-paradise-of-machines-could-undermine-humanity) [ 15 OPB — Pope Leo warns a ‘paradise of machines’ could undermine humanity on his France visit September 25, 2026 https://www.opb.org/article/2026/09/25/pope-leo-france-ai-abortion/ ](https://www.opb.org/article/2026/09/25/pope-leo-france-ai-abortion/) [ 16 National Catholic Reporter — Drawing huge crowds in Paris, Pope Leo urges France to embrace its Catholic heritage September 26, 2026 https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/drawing-huge-crowds-paris-pope-leo-urges-france-embrace-its-catholic-heritage ](https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/drawing-huge-crowds-paris-pope-leo-urges-france-embrace-its-catholic-heritage) [ 17 NBC News — Pope Leo draws vast crowds in Paris, warns of AI ‘paradise of machines’ September 26, 2026 https://www.nbcnews.com/world/pope-leo-xiv/pope-leo-draws-vast-crowds-paris-warns-ai-paradise-machines-rcna599958 ](https://www.nbcnews.com/world/pope-leo-xiv/pope-leo-draws-vast-crowds-paris-warns-ai-paradise-machines-rcna599958) [ 18 Emerson College Polling — September 2026 National Poll: Democrats with 11-Point Congressional Midterm Ballot Advantage September 24, 2026 https://emersoncollegepolling.com/september-2026-national-poll-democrats/ ](https://emersoncollegepolling.com/september-2026-national-poll-democrats/) [ 19 The Hill — Cook Political Report founder: House is a ‘done deal’ for Democrats, reclaiming Senate ‘very realistic’ September 2026 https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6113673-cook-predicts-democratic-midterm-wins/ ](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6113673-cook-predicts-democratic-midterm-wins/) [ 20 The Washington Post — Democrats now have easier paths to flipping the Senate. Here are races to watch September 26, 2026 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/09/26/democratic-senate-is-becoming-more-likely-here-are-races-watch/ ](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/09/26/democratic-senate-is-becoming-more-likely-here-are-races-watch/) [ 21 NPR — Iran war powers resolution fails in the Senate September 24, 2026 https://www.npr.org/2026/09/24/nx-s1-5980318/senate-iran-war-powers-vote ](https://www.npr.org/2026/09/24/nx-s1-5980318/senate-iran-war-powers-vote) [ 22 The Washington Post — How every senator voted on the Iran war powers resolution September 24, 2026 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2026/09/24/how-every-senator-voted-iran-war-powers-resolution/ ](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2026/09/24/how-every-senator-voted-iran-war-powers-resolution/) [ 23 Democracy Now! — Headlines for September 25, 2026 September 25, 2026 https://www.democracynow.org/2026/9/25/headlines ](https://www.democracynow.org/2026/9/25/headlines) [ 24 The Boston Globe — Why universities, law firms, tech, and media didn’t fight Trump September 25, 2026 https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/23/magazine/why-powerful-people-yielded-trump/ ](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/09/23/magazine/why-powerful-people-yielded-trump/) [ 25 Roll Call — As GOP revives anti-trans playbook, Dems try to turn the page September 24, 2026 https://rollcall.com/2026/09/24/gop-revives-anti-trans-playbook-dems-turn-page/ ](https://rollcall.com/2026/09/24/gop-revives-anti-trans-playbook-dems-turn-page/) [ 26 Seoul Economic Daily — China’s “Wall-Hung” Youth: Losing Stable Jobs and Ties, Scraping By on the Margins September 25, 2026 https://en.sedaily.com/international/2026/09/25/chinas-wall-hung-youth-give-up-work-and-ties-to-scrape-by ](https://en.sedaily.com/international/2026/09/25/chinas-wall-hung-youth-give-up-work-and-ties-to-scrape-by) [ 27 Global Times — China’s holiday economy in full swing as Mid-Autumn Festival fuels travel and spending September 27, 2026 https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202609/1371423.shtml ](https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202609/1371423.shtml) [ 28 CNBC — Pope Leo warns in France that AI is creating ‘paradise of machines’ September 25, 2026 https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/25/pope-leo-warns-in-france-that-ai-is-creating-paradise-of-machines.html ](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/25/pope-leo-warns-in-france-that-ai-is-creating-paradise-of-machines.html) **World Observatory · Society & Culture** is a weekly analytical review of social, cultural and political currents, compiled from public sources for the period indicated. It reflects reporting available at the time of publication and is not investment advice.