Karadzic the Monster

The people of Bosnia are using personal knowledge, which I believe would specifically be knowledge by acquintance and knowledge by authority.

An example of knowledge by acquintance is when the author claims "Karadzic has been closely associated with the men carrying out the killings and is good value for the label 'war criminal'." This would be knowledge by acquintance I believe because the people have learned this through what everyone else is saying... they associate him with killings. Although it is not direct knowledge by acquintance, because they are not learning it from meeting him, they are learning it from other people that they are talking to, so I think that it fits.

An example of knowledge by authority is when the author states, "Government leaders, including the new Muslim President, Alija Izetbegovic, were keen to emphasise the importance of working together, but Karadzic, who was always spoiling for an argument, wanted everything - from television and newspapers to the government itself - to be divided up and argued over." They learn that he is a "monster" because they can see other authority members enforcing the importance of working together, and showing what it is like to be a "good" authority figure. Then, the public sees Karadzic, acting in a complete opposite manner, and it creates a negatvie view of him.

The people justify their knowledge claims by backing it up with real evidence and examples of what actually happened. Their information is backed up with actual facts, so they give reasons as to why they feel a certain way. Here is an example of a fact that is presented in order to back up their claims of their knowledge and feelings, "Through the summer Karadzic's militias occupied large swathes of the country, driving Muslims out of their homes, and introducing Nazi-style regulations or killing those who tried to stay: 'ethnic cleansing'."