title: Convert python datetime to epoch with strftime
body: <p>I have a time in UTC from which I want the number of seconds since epoch.</p>
  
  <p>I am using strftime to convert it to the number of seconds. Taking 1st April 2012 as an example.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt;datetime.datetime(2012,04,01,0,0).strftime('%s')
  '1333234800'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>1st of April 2012 UTC from epoch is 1333238400 but this above returns 1333234800 which is different by 1 hour. </p>
  
  <p>So it looks like that strftime is taking my system time into account and applies a timezone shift somewhere. I thought datetime was purely naive?</p>
  
  <p>How can I get around that? If possible avoiding to import other libraries unless standard. (I have portability concerns).</p>