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By Henrik Maedler
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Saturday, 10 December 2005 |
 Sebastian Hirsch and Henrik Maedler attained the third tournament victory in the history of the IUB Debating Society at last weekend's Stockholm School of Economics in Riga International Inter-Varsity 2005, 2nd Baltic Debating Championships - the debating tournament with the longest name in the world.
Opposing the motion "This House would ban the reporting of hostage takings" on the second half of the table, Sebastian successfully extended the opposition's argumentation that the victims of hostage takings need to be given a "human face" so as to establish a relationship with the public.
The government teams from the University of Dundee, Scotland, and the University of Helsinki, Finland, had previously tried to establish the danger that lies within the pressure and agenda-setting power generated by terrorists holding hostages in unknown locations.
Wrapping up the arguments on the human face, the potential infringement of civil liberties, and technical deficiencies in the government's model, Henrik summarized the case for the opposition in what was considered by many the best speech of the final. Reportedly, even the British ambassador to Latvia could not help but smile when Henrik spoke of 'George and Tony making a questionable attempt at controlling CNN and BBC'.
 The victory at the Riga tournament marked the height of what is a budding special relationship between the IUB Debating Society and the SSE Riga Debate Club. Recalling the more than 800-year-old relationship between the cities of Bremen and Riga, the two clubs initiated a bilateral club partnership for the purposes of mutual technical assistance, formation of mixed teams, and assistance with tournament organization as recently as this year.
The IUB Debating Society is looking forward to welcoming teams from SSE Riga and many other international universities at its own tournament, IUB Open 2006, to take place January 27-29, 2006.
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