Mecca spelled Makkah, is a city in the Hejazi region of Saudi Arabia. The city is located 70 km inland from Jeddah, in a narrow valley 277 m above sea level, 340 kilometres south of Medina, its population in 2012 was 2 million, although visitors more than triple this number every year during the Ḥajj, held in the twelfth Muslim lunar month of Dhūl-Ḥijjah, it is the birthplace of Muhammad. A cave 3 km from Mecca was the site of Muhammad's first revelation of the Quran, a pilgrimage to it, known as the Hajj, is obligatory for all able Muslims. Mecca is home to the Kaaba, one of Islam's holiest sites and the direction of Muslim prayer, thus Mecca is regarded as the holiest city in Islam. Mecca was long ruled by Muhammad’s descendants, the sharifs, acting either as independent rulers or as vassals to larger polities, it was conquered by Ibn Saud in 1925. Non-Muslims are prohibited from entering the city. "Mecca" is the familiar form of the English transliteration for the Arabic name of the city, although the official transliteration used by the Saudi government is Makkah, closer to the Arabic pronunciation.

The word "Mecca" in English has come to be used to refer to any place that draws large numbers of people, because of this some English speaking Muslims have come to regard the use of this spelling for the city as offensive. The Saudi government adopted Makkah as the official spelling in the 1980s, but is not universally known or used worldwide; the full official name is Makkah al-Mukarramah or Makkatu l-Mukarramah, which means "Mecca the Honored", but is loosely translated as "The Holy City of Mecca". The ancient or early name for the site of Mecca is Bakkah. An Arabic word, its etymology, like that of Mecca, is obscure. Believed to be a synonym for Mecca, it is said to be more the early name for the valley located therein, while Muslim scholars use it to refer to the sacred area of the city that surrounds and includes the Kaaba; this form is used for the name Mecca in the Quran in 3:96, while the form Mecca is used in 48:24. In South Arabic, the language in use in the southern portion of the Arabian Peninsula at the time of Muhammad, the b and m were interchangeable.

Other references to Mecca in the Quran call it Umm al-Qurā (أُمّ ٱلْقُرَى, meaning "Mother of all Settlements" / "Mother of the Villages". Another name of Mecca is Tihāmah. Another name for Mecca, or the wilderness and mountains surrounding it, according to Arab and Islamic tradition, is Faran or Pharan, referring to the Desert of Paran mentioned in the Old Testament at Genesis 21:21. Arab and Islamic tradition holds that the wilderness of Paran, broadly speaking, is the Tihamah and the site where Ishmael settled was Mecca. Yaqut al-Hamawi, the 12th century Syrian geographer, wrote that Fārān was "an arabized Hebrew word, one of the names of Mecca mentioned in the Torah." Mecca is governed by the Municipality of Mecca, a municipal council of fourteen locally elected members headed by a mayor appointed by the Saudi government. As of May 2015, the mayor of the city was Dr. Osama bin Fadhel Al-Bar. Mecca is the capital of the Makkah Region; the provincial governor was prince Abdul Majeed bin Abdulaziz Al Saud from 2000 until his death in 2007.

On 16 May 2007, prince Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud was appointed as the new governor. The early history of Mecca is still disputed, as there are no unambiguous references to it in ancient literature prior to the rise of Islam; the Roman Empire took control of part of the Hejaz in 106 CE, ruling cities such as Hegra, located to the north of Mecca. Though detailed descriptions were established of Western Arabia by Rome, such as by Procopius, there are no references of a pilgrimage and trading outpost such as Mecca; the first direct mention of Mecca in external literature occurs in 741 CE, in the Byzantine-Arab Chronicle, though here the author places it in Mesopotamia rather than the Hejaz. Given the inhospitable environment, lack of historical references in Roman and Indian sources, historians including Patricia Crone and Tom Holland have cast doubt on the claim that Mecca was a major historical trading outpost. However, other scholars such as Glen W. Bowersock disagree and assert that Mecca was a major trading outpost.

The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus writes about Arabia in his work Bibliotheca historica, describing a holy shrine: "And a temple has been set up there, holy and exceedingly revered by all Arabians". Claims have been made. However, the geographic location Diodorus describes is located in northwest Arabia, around the area of Leuke Kome, closer to Petra and within the former Nabataean Kingdom and Rome's Arabia Petraea. Ptolemy lists the names of 50 cities in Arabia, one going by the name of "Macoraba". There has been speculation since 1646 that this could be a reference to Mecca, but many scholars see no compelling explanation to link the two names. Bowersock favours the identity of these two places, with "Macoraba" being Makkah followed by an aggrandizing Aramaic adjective rabb, similar to the modern Arabic custom of calling the city Makkah al-Mukarramah

One Settler, One Bullet was a rallying cry and slogan originated by the Azanian People's Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress, during the struggle of the 1980s against apartheid in South Africa. The slogan parodied the African National Congress's slogan'One Man, One Vote', which became'One Person, One Vote', it is not to be confused with the controversial protest song "Dubul' ibhunu". The slogan was never endorsed by the PAC but used by party members during rallies. After the dismantling of apartheid in 1994, PAC officials have distanced themselves and the party from the slogan and called it a "war cry from its armed wing" incompatible with its "current reconcillatory stand". By 1991, when the fight against apartheid neared its end, in the ideological terminology of the PAC, a settler was defined as a white person participating in the oppression of indigenous people and that did not include all white South Africans. White South Africans whose "sole allegiance was to Africa" were considered part of the African nation and so were excluded from the settler category.

However after 1991, grassroots sympathizers of the PAC at times interpreted the slogan as a call for attacks on whites in general and certain attacks on whites, such as the 1993 killing of US Anti-Apartheid activist Amy Biehl, were indeed directly motivated by the slogan. In 2015, student activist group Rhodes Must Fall and other affiliated movements revived the slogan by chanting "One Settler One Bullet" at rallies at the University of Cape Town and by statements on social media. "Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer" - competing slogan originated by Peter Mokaba of the ANC at the April 1993 funeral of assassinated South African Communist party leader Chris Hani. "One Merchant, One Bullet" - used by People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, an Islamist vigilante group in post-apartheid South Africa. "One Prawn, One Bullet" - line spoken by the mercenary character Koobus of the movie District 9

The Negativicutes are a class of bacteria in the phylum Firmicutes, whose members have a peculiar cell wall with a lipopolysaccharide outer membrane which stains gram-negative, unlike most other members of the Firmicutes. Although several neighbouring Clostridia species stain gram-negative, the proteins responsible for the unusual diderm structure of the Negativicutes may have been laterally acquired from Proteobacteria. Additional research is required to confirm the origin of the diderm cell envelope in the Negativicutes. Most members of this class are obligate anaerobes, occur in habitats such as rivers and the intestines of vertebrates, they range from spherical forms, such as Megasphaera and Veillonella, to curved rods, as typified by the selenomonads. Selenomonas has a characteristic crescent shape, with flagella inserted on the concave side, while Sporomusa is similar, but nonmotile, their names refer to this distinctive morphology: selene means moon, musa means banana. The class consists of 32 validly named genera across three orders and four families.

The orders Veillonellales and Acidaminococcales each contain a single family and Acidaminococcaceae while the order Selenomonadales contains two families and Sporomusaceae. The Negativicutes consisted of a single order, the Selenomonadales, two families and Acidaminococcaceae based on 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity. However, these groupings did not include several members within the Negativicutes that branched outside of the two families; the current taxonomic view is inclusive of these members who have been validly assigned to the families Selenomonadaceae and Sporomusaceae within the emended Selenomonadales order. Molecular markers in the form of conserved signature indels and proteins justify the present taxonomic divisions; these molecular markers are found at each taxonomic rank, their distribution is in agreement with the observed phylogenetic branching. Many works have implicated that the Negativicutes should be reclassified as an order within the class Clostridia, based on close phylogenetic branching, the observation that the spore-forming members of the Negativicutes share similar sporulation genes as the Clostridia, that both stain gram-negative.

However, the heterogeneity of members within the Negativicutes, as well as the distribution of molecular signatures, supports the view that the Negativicutes are in fact an independent class within the Firmicutes, with Clostridia as their closest phylogenetic neighbours. Additionally, several CSIs and CSPs have been found to be uniquely shared among all Negativicutes, while no CSIs have been found to be shared by both Negativicutes and Clostridia; the accepted taxonomy is based on the List of Prokaryotic names with Standing in Nomenclature and National Center for Biotechnology Information Selenomonadales Marchandin et al. 2010 emend. Campbell et al. 2015 Selenomonadaceae Campbell et al. 2015 Anaerovibrio Hungate 1966 Centipeda Lai et al. 1983 Megamonas Shah and Collins 1983 Mitsuokella Shah and Collins 1983 Pectinatus Lee et al. 1978 emend. Juvonen and Suihko 2006 Propionispira Schink et al. 1983 Schwartzia van Gylswyk et al. 1997 Selenomonas von Prowazek 1913 Zymophilus Schleifer et al. 1990 Sporomusaceae Campbell et al. 2015 Acetonema Kane and Breznak 1992 Anaeroarcus Strömpl et al. 1999 Anaeromusa Baena et al. 1999 Anaerosinus Strömpl et al. 1999 Anaerospora ♠ Woo et al. 2005 Dendrosporobacter Strömpl et al. 2000 Desulfosporomusa ♠ Sass et al. 2004 Pelosinus Shelobolina et al. 2007 Propionispora Biebl et al. 2001 Psychrosinus ♠ Sattley et al. 2008 Sporolituus Ogg and Patel 2009 Sporomusa Möller et al. 1985 Thermosinus Sokolova et al. 2004 Acidaminococcales Campbell et al. 2015 Acidaminococcaceae Marchandin et al. 2010 emend.

Campbell et al. 2015 Acidaminococcus Rogosa 1969 emend. Jumas-Bilak et al. 2007 Phascolarctobacterium Del Dot et al. 1994 Succiniclasticum van Gylswyk 1995 Succinispira Janssen and O'Farrell 1999 Veillonellales Campbell et al. 2015 Veillonellaceae Rogosa 1969 emend. Campbell et al. 2015 Allisonella Garner et al. 2003 Anaeroglobus Carlier et al. 2002 Dialister Moore and Moore 1994 emend. Morotomi et al. 2008 Megasphaera Rogosa 1971 emend. Marchandin et al. 2003 Negativicoccus al. 2010 Veillonella Prévot 1933 emend. Mays et al. 1982 Unclassified Quinella ♪ Krumholz et al. 1993Notes: ♠ Strains found at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, but not listed in the List of Prokaryotic names with Standing in Nomenclature ♪ Prokaryotes where no pure cultures are isolated or available, i. e. not cultivated or can not be sustained in culture for more than a few serial passages