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This part of the command line you showed:

    -DNDEBUG

causes C's assert() macro to "expand to nothing".  That's 
part of the definition of the C language, not a Python 
convention.  So if you compiled Python with -DNDEBUG, and 
are seeing an assert() trigger, then I can only conclude one of 
two things:

1. Your C compiler has a very bad bug.

or

2. You're not actually using the Python you think you're using.

That said, I've seen very strange bugs triggered by psyco too, 
but not even psyco can cause code to execute that doesn't 
exist.  No code is generated for an assert() when compiling 
with -DNDEBUG:  the C preprocessor throws assert()s away 
when NDEBUG is #define'd.