i'm impressed of the deep discussion.
my 2 cents:
from datetime import datetime import time
the timestamp in utc is:
timestamp = \
(datetime.utcnow() - datetime(1970,1,1)).total_seconds()
or,
timestamp = time.time()
if now results from datetime.now(), in the same DST
utcoffset = (datetime.now() - datetime.utcnow()).total_seconds()
timestamp = \
(now - datetime(1970,1,1)).total_seconds() - utcoffset