What is the story/history of this image, Please ?

I guess it is referring to The Octopus, which is sort of an uber-conspiracy story involving Bush I - the journalist who was writing about it died in suspicious circumstances. Was that Danny Casolaro?

*edit* and the artist tossed in some Skull and Bones - I think 322 is related to S&B too.

Kind of a frat boy goddess-worship sort of thing

saint to the skull and boners. Demosthenes was famous as a greek Orator, who stuttered and stammered as a young person, yet became eloquent in later life as an orator. The story I hear was he trained away the stutteering/stammmering by holding a pebble in his mouth while practicing speaking.

Is that background of his stuttering/stone in mouth/ eloquent orator later part of his weird appeal to S & B ?? Do they select intiates who have trouble speaking well, as in Shrub's case? But who later are seen as great, in part, for their speaking skills? Which I know is not a part Shrub has followed through on, but nevertheless, I think that has to have something to do with it.

"Octopus" - Total vertical penetration and integration into any and all critical government agencies, news organizations, legislative and judicial bodies, and quite obviously the White House.

Not sure the story of the actual image though.

further reading for all you rabid conspiracy theory hounds:
http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/institutional_analysis/167387.html

Anyway, here's an article:

http://www.copi.com/articles/guyatt/octopus.html

Danny Casolaro was jubilant. He had just cracked the biggest story of his life. A freelance journalist, Casolaro had, for a year, been investigating a shadowy group he called "The Octopus." Regularly fed sensitive information by sources within the CIA and Mafia, Casolaro believed he had uncovered a secret network of prominent individuals who orchestrated a series of criminal conspiracies. Better still, he had the evidence to prove it.

Membership of the "Octopus," included highly placed figures in the Reagan and Bush administrations and powerful individuals in the US intelligence community. More disquieting, Casolaro, had evidence that linked both these to senior figures in organised crime. All three operated together, he believed, in perpetrating massive swindles and engaging in widespread political fixits. It was an explosive story. One final meeting with a new "source" would wrap the story up. Despite recent death threats, he journeyed to a motel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in high mood to meet his informant.

The next day, Saturday, 10 August 1991, Casolaro was found dead in the bathtub of his motel room. Naked, his wrists had been slashed open a dozen times. Local police officers were quick to arrive and with a cursory examination concluded suicide. His briefcase containing sheaf's of documents relating to his story - which never left his side - was missing. Without notifying his family, Casolaro's body was illegally embalmed, impeding subsequent autopsy. Prior to his death, Casolaro had warned his brother Tony, "If anything happens to me, don't believe it was accidental." Casolaro also gave the same message to special FBI agent Thomas Gates, who was investigating volatile Mafia figure and CIA insider, Robert Booth Nichols. Nichols was a source for Casolaro's investigation of the "Octopus."

Central to the many activities of the "Octopus" that Casolaro unearthed, was the theft of a software package known as PROMIS. Bill Hamilton, president of Inslaw, a Washington DC., based software firm, developed the programme - licensing it to the US Department of Justice (DoJ). Designed as "case management" software, PROMIS was unique. Capable of tracking disparate data and people, it allowed DoJ prosecutors to keep tabs on all their legal cases throughout the USA. Later disputing their agreement with Inslaw, the DoJ refused to honour its commitment to pay license fees.

<more>

Did any of the componets of the image predate the Skull and Bones
and were any of the parts of the image common to Nazi imagery ?

self delete

"In 1823, Samuel Russell established Russell and Company for the purpose of acquiring opium in Turkey and smuggling it to China. Russell and Company merged with the Perkins (Boston) syndicate in 1830 and became the primary American opium smuggler. Many of the great American and European fortunes were built on the 'China' (opium) trade.

<snip>

"William Huntington Russell ('33), Samuel's cousin, studied in Germany from 1831-32. Germany was a hotbed of new ideas. The 'scientific method' was being applied to all forms of human endeavor. Prussia, which blamed the defeat of its forces by Napoleon in 1806 on soldiers only thinking about themselves in the stress of battle, took the principles set forth by John Locke and Jean Rosseau and created a new educational system. Johan Fitche, in his 'Address to the German People,' declared that the children would be taken over by the State and told what to think and how to think it.

<snip>

"When Russell returned to Yale in 1832, he formed a senior society with Alphonso Taft ('33). According to information acquired from a break-in to the 'tomb' (the Skull and Bones meeting hall) in 1876, 'Bones is a chapter of a corps in a German University.... General Russell, its founder, was in Germany before his Senior Year and formed a warm friendship with a leading member of a German society. He brought back with him to college, authority to found a chapter here.' So class valedictorian William H. Russell, along with fourteen others, became the founding members of 'The Order of Scull and Bones,' later changed to 'The Order of Skull and Bones'."

http://www.meta-religion.com/Secret_societies/Groups/Order_of_Skull/part_1.htm
(and many other sites)