1) removed many debug prints

2) solved a bug in automation (we had forgotten to saturate clauses in
forward_infer_step, a mistake that prevented equations from being
indexed, resulting in almost certain failure of automation).
3) disabled alpha_eq in NCicBlob.compare, because it now requires a
status containing the correct environment, which can't be guessed
inside compare (enabling alpha_eq results in the automation
sporadically failing).