The Italian Job

'Beauty fades, but dumb is forever' - is the wise old saying that jumped into my head  when I read the sad, yet hilarious story of 16 Italian models - who were duped into attending a sit-in protest in Rome in support of President Assad of Syria.

The models say they were employed by an agency to attend various events with Middle Eastern customers - and for one of their assignments they were to attend a pro-Assad sit-in and chant slogans in Arabic that they even didn’t understand - in return for €166 (£142).

As things turned out the 16 women were not paid for their efforts - and have now started legal proceedings to recover the fees they were promised by the dodgy agency acting for the Syrian dictator.

One of the models spilled the beans to the world with the following explanation as to what their meagre fee involved:

“My duty was to stay in the piazza holding a Syrian flag and shouting words in Arabic. The head of the agency said that no one should know that we were getting money to take part in the demonstration.”

Apparently, the sit-in took place in Santi Apostoli square, in Rome, in November  2011 and is just another example of the 'stop at nothing' dirty tricks of the Pro-Assad regime - as the death count in Syria's bloody civil war rises towards 100,000 - most of whom are children, of course.

The models claim that agency was run by an English-speaking Italian who said he had converted to Islam and worked closely with the secret services in several Arab countries - all of which may be true, but what were they possibly thinking of at the time?

So, I hope they get their money from this despicable agent, but if they do they would do well to  remember another wise old saying:

'Fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me'.