Free Republic

Like Fang Fang, the Chinese spy who had former Rep. Eric Swalwell under her thumb, Arcadia's Democrat mayor, Eileen Wang was quite the social butterfly. She got around. She was an active member of the Arcadia Rotary Club, the Arcadia Chamber of Commerce, the Arcadia Lions Club, the Arcadia Association of Realtors and the Arcadia High School Chinese Parents Booster Club in addition to organizing the “U.S. Heroes Music and Art Festival” which sounds like a pretty busy calendar.AdvertisementAnd with all this socializing, she won a seat on the Arcadia city council in 2022, which in its rotating system, allowed...

Two men working on behalf of the Chinese government’s Ministry of Public Security attempted to bribe an IRS agent in a scheme intended to further Beijing’s harassment of Falun Gong believers, the Justice Department revealed in a criminal complaint unveiled today. The defendants were arrested today in California on charges including acting as unregistered foreign agents, money laundering, and bribery. “The Chinese government has yet again attempted, and failed, to target critics of the PRC here in the United States,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement this afternoon. “The Justice Department will continue to investigate, disrupt, and prosecute...

Two convicted Chinese spies helped Arcadia’s former mayor become a successful SoCal politician — who secretly took orders from Beijing. Yaoning “Mike” Sun and John Chen helped Eileen Wang win office and secretly reported back to their masters in the People’s Republic of China, according to court documents. Sun took orders from Chen as he served as the campaign manager and business partner of Wang in her successful 2022 run for Arcadia City Council. When Wang won her seat, Chen told Sun to send a report to their PRC masters calling Wang a “new political star.” Wang would “go against...

The former mayor of Arcadia resigned after admitting to acting as an illegal foreign agent of China in a federal plea deal unsealed on Monday. Eileen Wang agreed with prosecutors that she worked with the People’s Republic of China to boost propaganda with a fake news website on US soil between 2020 and 2022. She was elected to Arcadia City Council in November 2022. The city is within LA County. Wang pled guilty to the federal charge at her arraignment in downtown Los Angeles on Monday afternoon. She faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. LA’s top federal prosecutor...

If you needed another reminder that the state of California needs help, this should do the trick. Eileen Wang, the mayor of the city of Arcadia, has just been charged with acting as a foreign agent for China. She was posting information on a supposed news website that was basically regime-approved propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party. How many more sleepers like Wang are out there? It’s disturbing to consider that possibility, isn’t it? From ABC News: California mayor charged with acting as illegal agent for China Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, California, has been charged with acting as...

The mayor of Arcadia, California, has been charged in federal court with acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Justice Department announced today. Eileen Wang, 58, of Arcadia, is charged via information with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government. In a related filing, Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony count, which comes with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. She is expected to make her initial appearance this afternoon in U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles. Wang is...

A Southern California mayor refused to comment on her former fiancé and campaign staffer, who was sentenced to four years in federal prison for "acting as an illegal agent of the People's Republic of China." Last week, Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang's former fiancé, Yaoning "Mike" Sun, was sentenced to four years in federal prison for acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. Wang has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with the case and refused to comment on it during Arcadia's first City Council meeting since the sentencing. Sun pleaded guilty in October 2025 to one...

Tom Stoppard did something no writer had ever done before: He wrote his masterpiece at the age of 82, after having written other masterpieces that would have been the capstones of any other writer’s career in his thirties, his forties, his fifties, and his sixties. That masterpiece was Leopoldstadt, and it was first staged in January 2020—45 years after the initial production of his first unambiguously great work, the astoundingly inventive and thrillingly alive farce called Travesties. It had come to the stage eight years after Stoppard had stunned the theatrical world at the age of 29 with Rosencrantz and...

Two Charlotte County men face felony charges after allegedly trespassing onto a DeSoto County farm and shooting a cow in the head while they were on their way to school. The DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office arrested Matthew Robert Wright and Gavin Hunter McMillan on charges of armed trespass and aggravated animal cruelty, the press release stated. Thomas Butler discovered the men on his family’s cattle farm northwest of Arcadia on Friday. One man stood in the pasture holding the dead heifer’s head, telling Butler “someone shot this cow,” according to Fox 4, which cited an arrest report. When Butler asked...

Police in California say thieves surrounded Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Walker Buehler last month and stole a pricey watch off his wrist LOS ANGELES (AP) — Thieves surrounded Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Walker Buehler last month outside a horse racing track in a Los Angeles suburb and slipped an expensive watch off his wrist as he jostled through the crowd, police said Tuesday. It came weeks after another professional athlete in California was the victim of a brazen mugging. Buehler was not threatened during the theft Sept. 28 at the Santa Anita Park horse racing track in Arcadia,...

That’s a rare find in Florida! A giant bone of a Mammoth dating back to the Ice Age was just found in the Peace River near Arcadia this week. The 4-foot, 50-pound bone is well over 10,000 years old! For two Florida scuba divers, ancient history resurfaced when they discovered a 4-foot, 50-pound mammoth bone dating back to the ice age. Derek Demeter and Henry Sadler, both avid explorers and amateur paleontologists, made their big discovery when diving in the dark waters of the Peace River near Arcadia on April 25. “[Henry] came up, and he’s like, ‘Derek, I found...

An Oklahoma murder mystery has brought tourists to the town of Arcadia for decades. An old gas station has sat along Route 66 for about a century. If you stop by, Sam Gillaspy, who goes by “Mr. Sam,” is happy to share his story about the station's checkered past. Sam says that back in the 1930s, when two brothers owned the station, a salesman stopped by to ask if they wanted to make counterfeit bills. The illegal business took off. "The counterfeiters, they built a little room back there," Mr. Sam explained. "Then they had a table right here and...

It was high noon when Doreta Peppa, a woman with long, dark locks and owlish eyes, entered the Sanctuary of Olympian Zeus. At first, tourists visiting the Athenian temple thought they had stumbled on to a film set. It wasn't just that Peppa cut a dramatic figure with her flowing robes and garlanded hair. Or that she seemed to be in a state of near euphoria. Or even that the group of men and women accompanying her - dressed as warriors and nymphets in kitsch ancient garb - appeared to have stepped straight out of the city's Golden Age.To the...

A clutch of modern pagans honored Zeus at a 1,800-year-old temple in the heart of Athens on Sunday — the first known ceremony of its kind held there since the ancient Greek religion was outlawed by the Roman empire in the late 4th century. Watched by curious onlookers, some 20 worshippers gathered next to the ruins of the temple for a celebration organized by Ellinais, a year-old Athens-based group that is campaigning to revive old religious practices from the era when Greece was a fount of education and philosophy. The group ignored a ban by the Culture Ministry, which declared...

Virgil's demi-god city 'found'Castor and Pollux fought Aeneas at Amyclae (ANSA) - Rome, April 6 - Italian archaeologists believe they have found an ancient city where the demi-gods Castor and Pollux fought Aeneas, the Trojan hero whose descendants founded Rome . Lorenzo and Stefania Quilici of Bologna and Naples universities claim the large, massive-walled settlement dating from the VI to III Century BCE was the city of Amyclae, believed by Renaissance scholars to be somewhere near Lake Fondi between Rome and Naples . "The road there is a perfectly preserved stretch of the ancient Via Appia," said Lorenzo Quilici ....

By the power of Zeus, ancient gods are back Worship of the 12 gods of Mount Olympus associated with ancient Greece could, thanks to a decision by a first-instance court in Athens, become part of the country’s contemporary culture. In a ruling made public yesterday, the court allowed the formation of an association whose members claim to worship Zeus and the other 11 gods. “I support everybody’s right to practice their faith, whichever it may be, without hindrance,” said Apostolos Vrachiolidis, a journalist and one of the founding members of the association. Members of the group deny that they engage...

This year, Andrea Berman will watch the Olympics for the first time in her life. But she doesn't care who will jump the highest, run the farthest or swim the fastest. She'll be watching the games—being held this year in Greece, their ancestral home—for any mention of Zeus, Athena or Apollo. "I will watch it to see if anything even remotely resembles anything I would know as an ancient ritual and tradition," Berman said. "But I kind of have mixed feelings. On one hand it will be great to see ancient traditions represented. But on the other hand, I know...

A Greek and American team of archaeologists working on the Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project believe evidence indicates that Zeus' worship was established on Mt. Lykaion as early as the Late Helladic period, if not before, more than 3,200 years ago... Over fifty Mycenaean drinking vessels, or kylikes, were found on the bedrock at the bottom of the trench along with fragments of human and animal figurines and a miniature double headed axe. Also found were burned animal bones, mostly of goats and sheep, another indication consistent with Mycenaean cult activity... Evidence from subsequent periods in the same trench...

NEW DISCOVERIES AT THE ASH ALTAR OF ZEUS, MT LYKAION, OFFER INSIGHTS INTO EARLY ORIGINS OF ANCIENT GREECE’S MOST POWERFUL GOD Mt. Lykaion Excavation and Survey Project Finds Early Activity Atop Arcadia’s Famous Mountain The Greek traveler, Pausanias, living in the second century, CE, would probably recognize the spectacular site of the Sanctuary of Zeus at Mt. Lykaion, and particularly the altar of Zeus. At 4,500 feet above sea level, atop the altar provides a breathtaking, panoramic vista of Arcadia. “On the highest point of the mountain is a mound of earth, forming an altar of Zeus Lykaios, and from...

The Greek god of thunder and lightning had Earthly beginnings, and scientists think they finally know where. Ancient Greeks first worshipped the omnipotent Zeus at a remote altar on Mount Lykaion, a team of Greek and American archaeologists now think. During a recent dig at the site, the researchers found ceremonial goods commonly used in cult activity and dated at over three millennia old, making them the earliest known "appearance" of Zeus in Greece. The discovery challenges the idea that Zeus worship began on the Greek island of Crete, which at least one classical historian names as the god's mythic...