Not Beyond Outrage After All

The summary at Kos gives the basics of the cause for my outrage:

US Customs Officials Destroy Musician's Instruments (Updated)

by Land of Enchantment

Too fucking stupid for words. Wanton destruction, and for no useful purpose at all.

Not a lengthy story, but absolutely outrageous. I think this deserves some attention:

Boujemaa Razgui, a flute virtuoso who lives in New York and works with many US ensembles, was returning to base over the holiday when Customs officials at Kennedy Airport asked to see his instruments. Bourjemaa carries a variety of flutes of varying ethnicity, each made by himself over years for specific types of ancient and modern performance.
...
At JFK, the officials removed and smashed each and every one of his instruments. No reason was given.

An artist's livelihood. A lifetime of skill and craft wantonly destroyed. Perhaps because he's Arab? (He's Moroccan, having moved to New York via Montreal.) It's not like they couldn't have checked that he was a "real" musician!

...

Additional info available from Arts Journal, Slipped Disc, and again Slipped Disc (with [copyrighted] photos of the flutes).

Mr. Razgui is originally from Morocco, is a Canadian citizen, and has toured the world for a dozen or more years with no problems. Did I mention that to no one's surprise he looks like an Arab?

I have a strange feeling the TSA or ICE agents who did the smashing are not liable to lawsuit. Mr. Razgui is just out a lifetime's painstaking hand-work, with no likelihood of recompense.

Andean Quenas... I own a similar flute,
and many stranger-looking woodwinds

In my youth, when I toured occasionally with The Broken Consort, toting one or sometimes two cases full of truly odd-looking wind instruments, copies of historical originals (imagine what those looked like on X-rays!), I feared such an incident. Nothing ever happened. Sometimes the agent wanted to see the instruments or proof that I owned them in the United States; more typically, they didn't want even that. But that was 1978. And this is now. Welcome to the wonderful world of now!