The Wall Street Journal and USA Today recently accused Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson of hypocrisy when he sued to block fracking near his Bartonville, TX horse ranch.  The virulent backlash (e.g., former Mobil executive vice president Louis W. Allstadt’s open-letter rebuke) spurred Tillerson’s attorney into a hasty two-step: Michael Whitten noted that the lawsuit seeks only to ban erection of a 160-foot water tower — that might offer leftover supplies to drillers — and was quick to point out that while several other petitioners worried the cavalcade of heavy trucks required by hydraulic fracturing would create “a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,” the Exxon honcho “never expressed that to me or anyone else.”  How then to explain Tillerson squandering $25 billion of shareholders’ funds acquiring XTO Energy Inc. (natural gas prices have tumbled 21% since the deal) after the smaller rival fracked a shale well within a mile of his house.

Look, each of us unquestionably benefits from the existence of airports, prisons and water treatment plants, yet none of us would welcome one of these facilities in our own backyard.  One could imagine, then, even greater reluctance to harbor an institution the polity views adversely, such as a needle exchange or clown academy.  For Palestinians, Jewish settlements are such an intrusion.  More than half a million Israelis now live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, on land seized during the six-day war.  Because the Geneva Conventions forbid construction on occupied territory, the United Nations (and most countries) regards the settlements as illegal.  Unmoved, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that the suspension of settlement activities “would serve nothing.”  In fact, last year Tel Aviv doubled the number of units coming out of the ground (2,530) over the year before.  Nonetheless, acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas is pushing to reestablish pre-1967 boundaries as a precursor to peace negotiations.  Many Israelis, meanwhile, fervently believe the Palestinians vitiated any claims of dominion by rejecting the original partition of the British Mandate in 1948.  No matter, because in the larger scheme of things, these fine points of cartography become moot: regardless of the era, any map of the area resembles gerrymandered (see: stacked and packed) U.S. congressional districts and simply belies sovereignty.

While the Israeli annexation is a slow burn, Moscow’s move on Crimea has been mercurial.  The Russian army, or in Putin’s words, “local defense forces,” have in little more than a week taken over an Ukrainian naval missile instillation, a military hospital and an airbase all without firing a shot.  In addition, the Russian navy trapped Ukrainian warships inside Lake Donuzlav by deliberately sinking three of its own vessels astride the inlet to the Black Sea.  Rhetoric aside, there is little politicians in the West can do, except liken these events to Hitler’s 1938 usurpation of the Sudetenland, and in the process establish their lack of naivety regarding Putin’s designs for a much larger land grab.  On Sunday, in an attempt to put on an air of legitimacy, Crimeans will vote on a referendum to formally secede and join the Russian Federation.  No doubt the outcome will be every bit the cinch yesterday’s North Korean election bore out, though the pro-Russian faction is taking no chances: Several opposition activists have gone missing while organized mobs have stolen or destroyed the passports (read: required voter IDs) of ethnic Ukrainians.  Given that these are the types of events that spawn World Wars, it is perhaps easier to fixate on Mr. Tillerson and the specter of adequate hydration.